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STUDIES IN 
RECENT ADVENTISM 



BY 

HENRY C. SHELDON 

Professor in Boston University 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



j^I4< 



<4& 






2> 



Copyright, 1915, by 
HENRY C. SHELDON 



SEP 14 1915 

DCI.A411484 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

Introduction 9 

CHAPTER I 

Features Commonly Included in Re- 
cent Adventism 17 

CHAPTER II 

Some Special Teachings of Adventist 
Parties 45 

CHAPTER III 

Cardinal Assumptions in Adventist 
Argumentation 55 

CHAPTER IV 

Criticism of the Cardinal Assump- 
tions 74 

CHAPTER V 

Criticism of Special Teachings of 
Adventist Parties 114 

CHAPTER VI 

A List of Objections to Recent 
Adventism 138 

Conclusion 153 



PREFACE 

Communications from pastors who 
were under pressure to deal with rad- 
ical types of Adventist teaching sug- 
gested the writing of this treatise. 
We were led by the testimonies sub- 
mitted to entertain the conviction 
that a compact essay, combining 
orderly exposition with well-grounded 
criticism, would fulfill a useful office. 
. We have aimed at simplicity, but 
the variety of teaching which has 
found place within the ranks of a 
pronounced Adventism makes some 
degree of' complexity unavoidable in 
any comprehensive treatment of the 
subject. 



INTRODUCTION 

In some form the doctrine of the 
future coming of Christ is part and 
parcel of the common Christian creed. 
The distinction of "Adventism," as 
the term is here used, lies in the 
following particulars: It treats the 
second coming, or prospective advent, 
of Christ as a matter of foremost 
importance in the Christian system; it 
insists that all Christians should con- 
template this great event with vivid 
expectancy, as being in all probability 
close at hand, if not indeed certain 
to occur at a near-by specific date; 
it regards the looked-for coming as 
pre-millennial, that is, antecedent to 
the thousand-year period mentioned 
in Rev. xx. 4, 5; it rates this coming 
as the indispensable condition of any 
such triumphs of the Christian re- 
ligion as are to be associated with the 
millennial age. 



10 INTRODUCTION 

Champions of Adventism in the 
sense of our discussion often call 
themselves pre-millennialists. But this 
term, while it names one feature, is 
an inadequate description of those 
whom we have in mind. It is quite 
possible to hold that the second com- 
ing of Christ will antedate the millen- 
nium, without either minifying the 
possibilities of the present dispensation 
or greatly magnifying the religious 
efficacy of the second coming. Indeed, 
not a few pre-millennialists in their 
total standpoint have had no close 
affiliation with typical Adventism, and 
cannot with historic justice be named 
among its advocates. 

A special era as respects the vigor- 
ous advocacy of the doctrinal particu- 
lars included in Adventism was initi- 
ated in the second quarter of the 
nineteenth century. This era came to 
a relative close near the end of the 
century, so far as the outcropping of 
a pronounced Adventism in the older 



INTRODUCTION 11 

and larger communions is concerned. 
Since that time, however, propagand- 
ism of an Adventist scheme has been 
vigorously carried on by certain sects 
or parties, and has claimed, besides, 
some earnest advocates in the larger 
denominations. We find, therefore, 
adequate reasons for including in our 
review the period from the beginning 
of the second quarter of the nineteenth 
century to the present. 

As is intimated in the above state- 
ment, our theme has to do with Ad- 
ventist teaching for the given period 
— with teaching outside the ranks of 
those currently styled "Adventists," as 
well as with that which has issued 
from those ranks. On the score of 
scholarly basis Adventist teaching in 
the former range might fairly claim 
the larger measure of attention. The 
number of its representatives has also 
been appreciable. In Great Britain 
and America it has been advocated 
by such writers as W. Cunninghame, E. 



12 INTRODUCTION 

Bickersteth, A. Bonar, H. Bonar, J. 
Cumming, E. B. Elliott, T. R. Birks, 
H. G. Guinness, J. H. Frere, G. Duf- 
field, D. T. Taylor, J. Seiss, S. Tyng, 
N. West, G. N. EL Peters, and A. J. 
Gordon. Many others, if not com- 
mitted to the full Adventist scheme, 
have given assent to some of its main 
elements. Here belong the eminent 
German theologians, Rothe, Delitzsch, 
Hofmann, Kurtz, Karsten, Auberlen, 
Beck, Thiersch, Nitzsch, Lange, Eb- 
rard, and Luthardt, together with Van 
Oosterzee, of the Netherlands. So 
far as we have been able to discover, 
very little inclination has been mani- 
fested by the writers in the group 
last mentioned to dabble with figures 
for the purpose of fixing the time of 
the second advent. 

The movement which resulted in 
the Adventist sects — of which the 
Seventh-Day Adventists and the Ad- 
vent Christians are the principal — 
may be said to have had its starting 



INTRODUCTION 13 

point in the public lectures of William 
Miller in 1831. It was his confident 
expectation that Christ would come 
in 1843. After the close of that year 
he was constrained to extend the time 
to the autumn of 1844. At first there 
was no thought of organizing a special 
Adventist communion. Miller and his 
associates addressed their message to 
the Christian public at large, and 
gained their following in the com- 
munions already in the field. Un- 
common activity was displayed in 
spreading the exciting message. Speak- 
ing of the summer of 1843 a historian 
of the Advent movement says: "The 
works of Miller, Litch, Jones, Ward, 
Hall, Bliss, Storrs, F. G. Brown, 
Whiting, G. F. Cox, Starkweather, 
Fleming, Fitch, Hawley, Himes, Sa- 
bine, and others, together with critical 
reviews of the chief opponents, were 
being extensively circulated through- 
out the American continent, in Europe 
and Asia, and to all missionary sta- 



14 INTRODUCTION 

tions of the British and American 
missions with which communication 
could be had. Vessels sailing from 
Boston and New York, for all foreign 
ports, were liberally supplied with 
publications to distribute wherever 
they went. Tracts were published 
in the French and German languages, 
bearing this message, and freely scat- 
tered among those portions of society 
in this country.' n 

Very nearly contemporary with the 
beginning of the Millerite movement, 
two different parties arose in England 
which manifested a rather vital in- 
terest in Adventism. These were the 
Plymouth Brethren and the Irvingites. 
The Mormons, who began their career 
in the United States at the same time, 
made room for a full Adventist scheme; 
but in reality they were much more 
concerned about the prospective rule 
of the Latter Day Saints in the earth 



1 1. C. Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message and 
Mission, Doctrine and People, p. 304. 



INTRODUCTION 15 

than about the events more generally 
supposed to be connected with the 
second advent. 

In spite of the failure of the Miller- 
ite predictions, and of other confident 
forecasts respecting the close of the 
dispensation, Adventism lived on with 
a good degree of stubborn persistence. 
Even the habit of "fixing the time" 
was not fully vanquished. In excep- 
tional instances it has been carried 
over into the twentieth century. A 
conspicuous example appears in C. T. 
Russell, whose writings, if the figures 
on the title pages may be trusted, 
have been circulated to the extent of 
several million volumes. 



CHAPTER I 

FEATURES COMMONLY INCLUDED IN 
RECENT ADVENTISM 

1. Assumption of the incompetency of 
ordinary means of evangelism to con- 
vert the world. This assumption runs 
through Adventist literature of the 
type which we are considering. Re- 
peatedly the thesis is put forward 
that the preaching of the gospel can- 
not be expected to effect the conver- 
sion of the great mass of men. The 
most that it can accomplish is to 
gather out the comparatively small 
number of the elect who are to serve 
as the special agents of the reappearing 
Christ. If the kingdom is ever to be 
brought to anything like a world- 
wide dominion, it will be through the 
coming and continued personal pres- 
ence of the Redeemer. As to the 

17 



18 STUDIES IN 

result of this extraordinary instrumen- 
tality some difference of opinion ob- 
tains. "Professional Adventists," as 
the churches may be called which 
issued from the Millerite movement, 
commonly, not to say universally, 
suppose the era of gracious oppor- 
tunity to be closed at the second 
coming, and limit the blessings of the 
millennial age entirely to those who, 
at its beginning, can be classified as 
saints. A theory quite as rigorous 
had much currency among the Ply- 
mouth Brethren, at least in their 
early days. 1 

Other advocates of a pronounced 
Adventism entertain very largely the 
conviction that the personal advent 
of Christ will impart a mighty im- 
petus to world evangelism and will 
result in greatly extending the area 
of salvation. But however wide a 
difference on this point may be in 
evidence, there is substantial agree- 

1 Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, pp. 227, 228. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 19 

ment in a pessimistic estimate of the 
efficacy of such forms of Christian 
enterprise as have been in use since 
Christ's ascension. Numerous cita- 
tions might be offered in confirmation. 
"It is Christ's coming/' says Seiss, 
"that is to make the millennium, and 
not the millennium which is to prepare 
the world for Christ's coming. . . . The 
Holy Scriptures, so far from promising 
to us a millennium of universal right- 
eousness before Christ comes, univer- 
sally represent the world as abounding, 
if not ever growing, in wickedness, even 
up to the very moment of his com- 
ing. . . . People think they see signs 
of promise in the movements of reform. 
They think to give the Church a 
better shape, and the State a better 
government, and the world a freer 
Bible, and that thus the millennium 
will come. I have no confidence in 
any such hopes. I see more of promise 
in the darkest features of the times 
than in all these pious and patriotic 



20 STUDIES IN 

dreams." 1 "Gigantic is the misconcep- 
tion/ ' exclaims West, "to dream that 
God has given the Church, unable to 
reform herself, to build the Christian 
state up to a kingdom of Christ, or 
to reform the world. . . • More and 
more the Christian state is a tool of 
Satan." 2 "While rejecting," writes 
Peters, "the Whitbyan theory of a 
future conversion of the world previous 
to the second advent of Jesus as un- 
scriptural and misleading, we at the 
same time firmly hold to a future 
blessed and glorious conversion of the 
Jews and Gentiles after the second ad- 
vent, as plainly taught in the Word." 3 
"They are without warrant in the 
Word," says Tyng, "who are looking 
for the conversion of the world by 
the preaching of the cross and the 
extending influence of the Church. In 
no portion of the Scripture is such 

i The Last Times, pp. 40, 42, 299, 300. 
2 The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, pp. 448, 456. 
8 The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus, the Christ, III. 
210. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 21 

a hope justified. All that the gospel 
was designed to accomplish was less 
than this." 1 "Nowhere," claims A. 
J. Gordon, "is universal redemption 
predicted as the result of preaching 
the gospel in this dispensation." First 
through Christ's personal coming in 
glory will the Jews be converted and 
a great ingathering of the Gentiles be 
effected. 2 The parable of the leaven 
is not opposed to this conclusion, for 
that symbolizes rather the spread of 
an apostate and corrupt Church than 
the transfusion of the world with a 
regenerate life. 3 Some of the "Pre- 
millennial Essays" presented at the 
Prophetic Conference of 1878 greatly 
qualify the idea that the preaching 
of the gospel was designed to convert 
the world. 4 In connection with the 



" He Will Come, p. 144. 

2 Ecce Venit. Behold He Cometh, pp. 47-57. 

3 Ibid., pp. 69-73. This interpretation is not convincing. 
Since it is the kingdom of heaven which is likened to leaven, the 
reference must be to the energetic and pervasive working of leaven, 
and not at all to its association with corruption. 

4 Essays iii and vii. 



22 STUDIES IN 

Millerite movement an editorial in 
The Signs of the Times, in 1842, 
characterized the notion of the world's 
conversion as "a false notion which 
blinds the minds of the Church and 
the world to the speedy coming of 
Christ"; and at the "Mutual Con- 
ference" at Albany in 1845 one of 
the representative statements affirmed 
that there is no promise of the world's 
conversion. 1 In a widely circulated 
book W. E. Blackstone states: "This 
wicked world, which is so radically 
opposed to God, and under the present 
control of his arch enemy, is not 
growing better. On the contrary, judg- 
ment, fire, and perdition are before it. 
Perilous times are coming. . . . There 
is no hope, then, for the world, but 
in the coming of Christ the king." 2 
"Christ's kingdom," writes F. C. Ott- 
man, "shall be established, not as men 
vainly imagine by the preaching of 

1 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 251, 
417, 418. 

2 Jesus is Coming, pp. 148, 149. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 23 

the gospel, but by the iron rod that 
shall smite down all opposition and 
make the enemies of Christ like the 
broken pieces of a potter's vessel." 1 

Quite as emphatic as any of the 
foregoing declarations are the oracular 
utterances of C. T. Russell. "God 
has not yet," he asserts, "by any 
means exhausted his power for the 
world's conversion. Nay, more: he 
has not yet even attempted the world's 
conversion. . . . The only hope is in 
the intervention of supernatural power, 
and just such a change is what God 
has promised in and through Christ's 
millennial kingdom." 2 At the Pro- 
phetic Conference held in Chicago in 
1914, the distinction was more than 
once made between "converting the 
world" and "evangelizing the world," 
the latter phrase being made to de- 
note the limited enterprise of pub- 
lishing the gospel in all lands; "and 



1 The Unfolding of the Ages in the Revelation of John, pp. 65, 66. 

2 Studies in the Scriptures, I. 95, IV. 311. 



M STUDIES IN 

that," said one of the speakers, "is 
something that can be done easily in 
a single generation." 1 The task of the 
Church, it was urged, is simply to evan- 
gelize the world, to publish the truths 
of the gospel, to the end of making up 
the number of the elect, and so hasten- 
ing the second coming of Christ. 

In some instances the pessimistic 
berating of the present dispensation, 
or that obtaining in the pre-millennial 
age, falls little short of being whole- 
sale. Statements are met with which 
imply that the Lord's people are, in 
point of numbers, a perfectly insig- 
nificant factor in the world. Some of 
those attached to the Millerite move- 
ment began to denounce the Protestant 
communions, along with the Papal 
Church, and to include them all under 
the category of the wicked Babylon. 
Miller himself discountenanced this ex- 
treme, but it had a considerable run, 2 

1 Page 76 in the Report of the Conference. 

2 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 32, 33, 
395, 396, 404. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 25 

and has been substantially reproduced 
in a very representative publication of 
the Seventh-Day Adventists. 1 The 
same sweeping judgment has come to 
voluble expression in the writings of 
C. T. Russell. According to his diag- 
nosis, if Rome is the mother of harlots, 
the Protestant denominations are her 
daughters. 2 They too are included in 
the wicked Babylon. 3 While the dragon 
depicted in the Apocalypse symbolizes 
the Roman empire continued in the 
present civil powers, and the beast 
stands for the papal system of govern- 
ment, the false prophet or image of 
the beast denotes the Protestant Fed- 
eration of Churches, and the Church 
of England is represented by the 
two-horned beast mentioned in Rev- 
elation xiii. II. 4 In all denominations 
the great majority have neither part 
nor lot in the body of Christ. 5 God 

i Bible Readings for the Home Circle, 1914, pp. 257, 258, 
« Studies in the Scriptures, IV. 35, VI. 202. 
» Ibid., III. 154, VI. 430. 
4 Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. iv-xvi. 
« Ibid., VI. 446. 



26 STUDIES IN 

is not concerned about them. He 
leaves not merely the heathen world 
to itself in the present age, but so- 
called Christendom as well. 1 A writer 
whose expressed opinion of C. T. 
Russell is far from flattering approx- 
imates sufficiently to his point of view 
to remark, "To-day we witness the 
apostasy of Gentile Christendom." 2 

Not less pessimistic than the most 
radical of the cited opinions is the 
estimate which the early Mormon 
writers passed upon the entire record 
of the post-apostolic Church. Orson 
Pratt, Orson Spencer, and others recog- 
nized both in Catholicism and Pro- 
testantism only fit subjects for wrath. 
In more than one instance it was 
designated as the salutary and pre- 
destined office of the Latter Day 
Saints to dash to pieces all antecedent 
systems in Church and state, 3 thus 

i Studies in the Scriptures, VI. 205. 

2 A. C. Gaebelein, Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, 
p. 197. 

8 Pratt, Series of Pamphlets, No. VI, p. 85; Orson Hyde, Jour- 
nal of Discourses, VIII. 48-53. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 27 

fulfilling the function of the prophetic 
stone cut out of the mountains. 

2. Affirmation of an interregnum be- 
tween the first and the second advent 
of Christ. The standpoint of the 
whole series of writers referred to 
under the preceding topic involves a 
close approach to the idea of an 
interregnum fpr the given period. In 
proportion as the relative powerlessness 
of the means employed in the present 
dispensation is emphasized, the infer- 
ence is enforced that the rule or king- 
dom of Christ is for the time being 
debarred from the world. Not all the 
writers in question positively assert 
this inference; but some of them make 
the assertion with greater or less dis- 
tinctness. "The period of the Christian 
Church/' says Peters, "is an intercal- 
ary one, extending through the 'times 
of the Gentiles/ . . . The kingdom 
being rejected by the Jews at the first 
advent, an intercalary period inter- 
venes, and the 'times of the Gentiles' 



28 STUDIES IN 

are continued on to the second ad- 
vent. . . . The design of this dispen- 
sation, or ' times of the Gentiles/ is 
not to establish the kingdom, but to 
prepare the way for the final restora- 
tion of that kingdom to the covenanted 
people." 1 Seiss records the opinion 
that " Satan, for the most part, is 
yet king and master of this world, 
and not the illustrious Son of David." 2 
An identical conviction is expressed by 
Guinness. 3 A. J. Gordon utters an 
implicit warning against being seduced 
by recent victories of the gospel "into 
the notion that the kingdom has al- 
ready come." 4 C. J. Scofield speaks 
of "the interregnum between the cruci- 
fixion and the second coming of 
Christ." 5 The kingdom, he affirms, is 
established first over restored and 
converted Israel. Uriah Smith, acting 
as spokesman for the Seventh-Day 

i The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus, I. 158, 243, 587. 

2 The Last Times, p. 132. 

3 The Approaching End of the Age, p. 22. 
* Ecce Venit, p. 94. 

6 Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, p. 43. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 29 

Adventists, rebukes the "bewildered 
commentators" who hold the theory 
"that the kingdom of God was set 
up at the first advent of Christ." 1 

3. Belief that the Jews will be re- 
stored and invested with a certain pre- 
eminence in the millennial kingdom. 
This belief was not shared by William 
Miller, and for the greater part has 
been eschewed by those in the line 
of succession from him. It was ad- 
vocated, however, by some Millerites 
as early as 1842, 2 and one small body 
of Adventists — The Churches of God 
in Christ Jesus — still gives it hos- 
pitality. 3 

Outside the circle of professional 
Adventism those taking the point of 
view of pre-millennialism have often 
entertained the expectation of a res- 
toration of the Jewish people and of 
their exaltation to a headship over 

1 Thoughts Critical and Practical on the Book of Daniel, 1873, 
p. 57. 

* Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 385, 386. 
•Carroll, Religious Forces in the United States, p. 13. 



30 STUDIES IN 

the world. E. B. Elliott gives modest 
expression to this expectation. 1 Seiss 
puts it forth in this emphatic sen- 
tence: "The despised Jew shall yet 
look forth from Zion and behold the 
grave of every kingdom upon earth." 2 
West includes among well-established 
conclusions the following: "That as a 
people Israel shall repossess their 
fatherland; that Israel, as such, shall 
stand with the Lamb upon the earthly 
Mount Zion, and dwell in the 'beloved 
city;' that not only in millennial days, 
but in the final state, Israel shall be 
the root and basis, the center and the 
crown, of the glorious kingdom of 
God." 3 According to Peters the Jews 
are to be reinstated in Palestine, not 
so much by colonization as by the 
display of supernatural power, and 
from this ancient seat they are to 
"sustain a certain well-defined pre- 
eminence among and over the na- 

1 Horae Apocalypticae, IV. 129. 

2 The Last Times, p. 169. 

3 The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, p. 244. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 31 

tions." 1 In the "Pre-millennial Essays" 
of the Prophetic Conference of 1878 
the judgment is expressed that Israel 
is to be restored and given an exalted 
position. 2 The like judgment pervades 
the addresses given at the Conference 
of 1914. A. J. Gordon contends for 
the national restoration of Israel, and 
forecasts for her a distinct primacy 
in the kingdom. "Through her as 
a redeemed nation, and through her 
exalted city as capital of the world, 
the Son of David will now extend 
his blessed sway to the ends of the 
earth." 3 Identical conclusions are set 
forth in A. B. Simpson's summary 
of pre-millennial tenets. 4 "During the 
millennial age," says C. T. Russell, 
"Israel will be the chief nation of the 
earth, at the head of all on the earthly 
plane of being, into oneness and har- 
mony with which all the obedient 

i The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 92. 

2 Essays v and viii. 

3 Ecce Venit, pp. 294-296. 

* The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 17-19. 



32 STUDIES IN 

will be gradually drawn." 1 Among 
German writers of a comparatively 
recent date Hofman, Auberlen, and 
Volck are on record as ready to 
accord to the Jews a certain pre- 
eminence in the millennial kingdom. 2 
Account was made of the restoration 
of Israel by the Plymouth Brethren 
and the Irvingites. In the creed of 
the Mormons, as stated in one of 
their major authorities, this article is 
included: "We believe in the literal 
gathering of Israel, and in the restora- 
tion of the Ten Tribes; that Zion 
will be built upon this continent; that 
Christ will reign personally upon the 
earth, and that the earth will be 
renewed and receive its paradisaic 
glory." 3 More specifically Mormon 
faith locates the central seat of the 
coming kingdom in Jackson County, 
Missouri, where the New Jerusalem 
will be commenced. So states the 

1 Studies in the Scriptures, I. 241. 

2 Article "Chiliasmus" in Herzog's Real-encyclopadie. 
8 The Pearl of Great Price, p. 122. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 33 

catechism for children by Elder John 
Jaques. 

4. The assumption that extraordinary 
events, agreeable to a distinctly super- 
natural regime, will signalize the intro- 
duction and progress of the millennium. 
That there will be a display of resist- 
less might at the inauguration and 
during the continuance of the millen- 
nium is the common postulate of 
pronounced Adventism. The display is 
conceived to have, on the one hand, 
an aspect of marvelous beneficence 
and, on the other, of terrible retrib- 
utive wrath. With the Adventist bod- 
ies, since they commonly terminate the 
season of grace at the second advent, 
as was noticed above, the saints are 
made the sole subjects of the beneficent 
intervention of divine power. For the 
rest of mankind the new age proffers 
nothing but destruction. Other repre- 
sentatives of pronounced Adventism 
are generally minded to take a broader 
view of the beneficent ministry which 



34 STUDIES IN 

obtains in the millennial period. Very 
glowing pictures find place in their 
writings. Thus Peters remarks: "The 
supernatural is held in abeyance as 
to its outward manifestation until the 
time arrives for the restoration of the 
forfeited blessing, the personal dwell- 
ing of God with man, which shall be 
experienced in this kingdom. When 
Jesus, of supernatural origin and glo- 
rified by supernatural power, shall come 
the second time unto salvation, his 
supernatural might shall be exerted in 
behalf of this kingdom in the most 
astonishing manner." 1 The curse will 
be taken off from physical nature, and 
men will be refreshed inwardly by a 
greater Pentecost. 2 A like point of 
view is embodied in these words of 
Seiss: "Men may scoff, and say that 
we are degrading the blessed Saviour 
to a level with earthly monarchs, and 
surrounding him with the miserable 



1 The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 81. 

2 Ibid., II. 143, 144, III. 64. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 35 

trappings of their foul courts. They 
may ridicule us, and say that we are 
dragging down the throne of heaven's 
King to place it amid graves, alms- 
houses, hospitals, penitentiaries, labor- 
prisons, sickly cities, and worn-out 
states. But they forget that the 
promise is that Christ shall make all 
things new and banish forever all these 
evidences and emblems of depravity 
and sin. They forget that death is 
to be swallowed up of life, and the 
whole sentence of the world's curse 
rescinded." 1 "During the kingdom 
age," writes C. T. Scofield, "when 
Jesus Christ is reigning here, he will 
not suffer even the beasts to tear 
each other." 2 

The opposite picture, furnished by 
the unsparing exercise of sovereign 
retributive might, is also sketched 
with a bold hand. "God does not 
delight," writes Peters, "in employing 



i The Last Times, p. 135. 

2 Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, p. 46. 



36 STUDIES IN 

violence, but force terrible and destruc- 
tive must be used. ... A theocracy 
embracing a pure infallibility, adminis- 
tered through righteous and glorified 
agents, is to possess the rule over 
the earth. Fallible imperialism, con- 
stitutional monarchy, and republican- 
ism must be subverted and give place 
to this one. . . . All that oppose this 
coming kingdom and its august ruler 
shall be destroyed." 1 "That a period 
of awful and destructive judgments 
on apostate Christendom/ ' says Guin- 
ness, "is to prepare the way for the 
full establishment of the millennial 
throne of Christ, and the world-wide 
recognition of his peaceful righteous 
sway, is abundantly clear, but the 
precise nature, duration, and effect 
of these judgments it is impossible to 
define." 2 "Instead of calling the world 
during the millennial age," declares 
C. T. Russell, "the Lord will command 



i The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 775, 780. 

2 The Approaching End of the Age, pp. 487, 488. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 37 

them — command obedience to the prin- 
ciples of righteousness; and every 
creature will be required (not requested) 
to render obedience to the millennial 
government, otherwise he will receive 
stripes for his disobedience, and ulti- 
mately will be destroyed from amongst 
the people.' n 

Those who anticipate that the mil- 
lennium will be a period of efficient 
evangelism find a support for their 
expectation in the binding of Satan 
for this period. 2 The Seventh-Day 
Adventists recognize the fact of the 
binding, but give it little else than 
a spectacular significance. 3 According 
to their scheme, there are no sinful 
men in conscious existence during the 
thousand years, and the saints through- 
out the same interval are sheltered in 



1 Studies in the Scriptures, VI. 93. 

2 See, among others, West, The Thousand Years in Both Testa- 
ments, p. 286; Simpson, The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 19; Guin- 
ness, Light for the Last Days, pp. 563-569; J. F. Silver, The 
Lord's Return, pp. 219, 257; R. McWatty Russell and B. W. 
Riley in Report of the Prophetic Conference of 1914, pp. 61, 108. 

8 Fundamental Principles of Seventh-Day Adventists, No. 27. 



38 STUDIES IN 

a heavenly sphere. This party of 
Adventists have been charged with 
canceling the doctrine of the millennial 
kingdom since, whatever recognition 
they may accord to a visible advent 
of Christ, they assign him no visible 
reign upon earth till after the expira- 
tion of the thousand years. It may 
be noticed also that among the Ad- 
vent Christians a division of opinion 
exists as respects the fact of a future 
millennium. 

In the customary thesis of ardent 
pre-millennialists the visibility both of 
the advent and of the reign of Christ 
in the millennial period are assumed. 
It suits, however, the convenience of 
C. T. Russell to deny both the one 
and the other. In this way he secures 
a species of shelter against exposure 
of the utter failure of his chronological 
calculations; at least he would have 
done so if his discretion had not< 
failed him on a capital point. 1 

1 See page 42. . 



RECENT ADVEN.TISM 39 

As respects the subjects of the first 
resurrection, or that which takes place 
at the opening of the millennium, a 
large proportion of Adventist writers 
give a very broad interpretation to the 
words of the Revelator, and include 
with the martyrs all the righteous 
dead. For the most part they sup- 
pose the resurrection of the wicked 
to be deferred to the close of the 
millennium. Both points are stated 
very explicitly by A. B. Simpson as 
follows: "The Scriptures distinctly 
speak of two judgments — the judgment 
of the saints, which is a time of gra- 
cious recompense and reward for the 
services of his people, and the judg- 
ment of the wicked, which is entirely 
different — a dark and dreadful day 
when men shall be judged according 
to their works, and not on the prin- 
ciples of grace at all. They speak as 
distinctly of two resurrections, namely, 
the resurrection of the saints at Christ's 
coming, in which the wicked shall have 



40 STUDIES IN 

no part, and then the resurrection of 
all the remaining dead at the end of 
the millennium and on the morning 
of the judgment of the Great Day." 1 
One of the minor bodies of Advent- 
ists — the Life and Advent Union— de- 
nies altogether the resurrection of the 
wicked. 

5. Stress upon the nearness of the 
second advent. This feature in recent 
Adventism is too common to require 
confirmatory citations. All the writers 
in our list commend the attitude of 
earnest expectancy, and many of them 
are inclined to discover in the more 
notable events of the times signs that 
the Lord is about to return. Not 
infrequently enthusiastic anticipation 
has stimulated to attempts to fix the 
date. Cunninghame attached great 
importance to the year 1839, and 
while he did not undertake to locate 



1 The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 36, 37. Compare dimming, 
Apocalyptic Sketches, pp. 445, 458; Guinness, The Approach- 
ing End of the Age, pp. 57-61; Gordon, Ecce Venit, p. 268; Mun- 
hall, The Lord's Return, pp. 95-103. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 41 

precisely the end of the dispensation, 
he felt assured that the commencement 
of the mighty catastrophe was "at 
the very door." 1 William Miller, as 
has been observed, selected first 1843 
and then 1844 as certain to witness 
the great crisis. 2 E. B. Elliott, while 
not naming a specific year, concluded 
that the chronological data of the 
Bible warrant the inference that the 
end belongs in the neighborhood of 
1866. 3 Cumming took a substantially 
identical position. 4 Seiss favored the 
supposition that the second advent 
would occur by 1870, and was con- 
fident that it would take place before 
the end of the nineteenth century. 5 
A pamphlet issued in 1866 under the 
names of S. S. Brewer and A. Decker 
took the ground that the second ad- 
vent would occur not later than 1867, 

1 The Scientific Chronology of the Year 1839. 

2 Course of Lectures. 

» Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. IV. 

* The End or the Proximate Signs of the Close of the Dispensa- 
tion, pp. 72, 73. 

* The Last Times, p. 269. 



42 STUDIES IN 

and one published anonymously in 
1871 argued confidently for the coming 
of Christ in 1873. One writer has 
claimed — with what right we are not 
able to say — that more than a hundred 
expositions have put the crisis between 
1866 and 1875. 1 Guinness expressed 
the conviction that the beginning of 
the millennial age could not well be 
placed later than about 1923. 2 C. T. 
Russell considered himself authorized 
to enlighten his fellow men by the 
publication of the following eschato- 
logical programme: The seventh thou- 
sand-year period began with the year 
1873. In the following year Christ 
made his second advent, which took 
place invisibly. In 1878 the apostles 
and other overcomers belonging to the 
gospel age were raised and introduced 
to a share in the millennial reign in 
company with Christ. In 1914 the 
world powers are to be overthrown 



i M. Baxter, The Great Crisis at the Period of 1867 to 1875. 
» The Approaching End of the Age, pp. 472-487. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 43 

and the visible rule of Israel, now at 
length installed over the kingdom of 
God, is to be introduced. 1 

The Mormons have not been much 
given to calculating precise dates. 
Joseph Smith, however, is reputed to 
have been assured that if he lived 
to be eighty-five years of age he 
would see the face of the Son of man. 2 
The Irvingites in the early period of 
their history cherished a very strong 
conviction of the imminence of the 
second coming. Among the dates fa- 
vored by them were 1835, 1838, and 
especially 1866. 3 The Plymouth Breth- 
ren wholly escaped the temptation to 
specify exact dates, but in vivid ex- 
pectancy they were not behind con- 
temporary parties. "If anyone had 
told the first Brethren that three 
quarters of a century might elapse 
and the Church be still on earth, 

1 Studies in the Scriptures. For specifications on the 1914 
crisis see III. 228, IV. 616, VI. 579. 

2 Doctrine and Covenants, cxxx. 14-17. 

3 E. Miller, History and Doctrines of Irvingism, II. 6-10. 



44 RECENT ADVENTISM 

the answer would probably have been 
a smile, partly of pity, partly of 
disapproval, wholly of incredulity. 1 

Naturally, the great European con- 
flict, beginning in 1914, has power- 
fully stimulated Adventist fancy, and 
references to the gathering of the 
nations to the battle of Armageddon 
have been frequent. 

*W. B. Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, p. 339. 



CHAPTER II 

SOME SPECIAL TEACHINGS OF 
ADVENTIST PARTIES 

The reference here is to views 
which have gained a right of way 
in one or more of the Adventist com- 
munions and in the party for which 
C. T. Russell acts as spokesman. 
Representatives of Adventism in the 
larger communions have no sympathy 
with them. Perhaps, however, a par- 
tial exception should be made in case 
of the second in the list of special 
teachings. 

1. The unconsciousness or nonexist- 
ence of the dead. With the exception 
of the Evangelical Adventists, the de- 
nominations which issued from the 
Millerite movement deny the immor- 
tality of the soul, maintain that the 
dead are in a state of complete uncon- 
sciousness, and, in so far as they 

45 



46 STUDIES IN 

assume the resurrection of the wicked, 
assert that they are raised only to be 
annihilated after a brief interval. Wil- 
liam Miller himself did not accept 
this order of belief, but it early gained 
a foothold among his followers, and 
before his death (1849) had come into 
the ascendant. 1 A daughter of Miller 
expressed the opinion that if her father 
had lived a year longer, he would un- 
doubtedly have embraced the doctrine 
of the unconscious state of the dead. 2 

In the development and defense of 
the doctrine of the suspended or can- 
celed existence of the dead, Adventist 
teaching manifested a tendency to 
adopt materialistic premises. A con- 
spicuous example is afforded by Miles 
Grant. As between matter and spirit 
he gives a distinct primacy to matter, 
affirming that all power primarily pro- 
ceeds from that which is material, and 
making spirit in itself destitute of life, 



1 Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message, pp. 508-518. 

2 J. V. Himes, A Brief History of William Miller, p. 300. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 47 

consciousness, and intelligence. 1 "All 
personalities/ ' he says, "have bodily 
organs. All immaterial things are but 
properties of material bodies, and cease 
with them. The mind of man is not 
an entity, but the product of that 
wonderful organ called the brain.' n 
This point of view he applies to God 
as well as to man, and brings out a 
representation of a localized Deity 
that strongly reminds of the Mormon 
conception. 3 It is fair to add that, 
while many of Grant's brethren among 
the Advent \ Christians accept his 
views, others criticize them as being 
too materialistic. 

A theory in line with that of Grant 
as respects the interpretation of hu- 
man personality is advocated by C. 
T. Russell. Death, he affirms, intro- 
duces to a period of absolute uncon- 
sciousness — more than that, it is a 
period of absolute nonexistence, except 

1 Positive Theology, pp. 50, 51. 

2 Ibid., p. 302. 

» Ibid., pp. 317-326. 



48 STUDIES IN 

as men are preserved in the Father's 
purpose and power. Hence the awak- 
ening from death, to those restored, 
will mean a revival of consciousness 
from the exact moment and standpoint 
where consciousness was lost in death. 
"As applied to the dead, sleep is 
merely an accommodated term, for 
really the dead are dead, utterly 
destroyed/ n 

A recent statement puts the belief 
of Seventh-Day Adventists in these 
terms: "When the spirit goes back 
to God, the dust, from which man 
was made a 'living souF in the begin- 
ning, goes back as it was to the earth, 
and the individual no longer exists as 
a living, conscious, thinking being, ex- 
cept as he exists in the mind, plan, 
and purpose of God, through Christ 
and the resurrection." 2 

2. The doctrine of the little flock. 
While representatives of Adventism 



1 Studies in the Scriptures, V. 329, 346. 

2 Bible Readings for the Home Circle, p. 507. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 49 

very commonly have emphasized the 
office of the present dispensation as 
being that of gathering out an elect 
people, a special flock of Christ — and 
some of them have put this point 
very strongly — none of them, so far 
as we have observed, has duplicated 
the description of the little flock, 
which is given by C. T. Russell. 
According to his characterization, the 
little flock is composed exclusively of 
those who have been drawn from the 
gospel dispensation. No Old Testa- 
ment saint, whatever his spiritual rank, 
is admitted to a place in this select 
body. Furthermore, in point of destiny 
the members of the little flock are 
distinguished from all others who at- 
tain unto salvation; they share in the 
perfection of the divine nature, while 
the perfection of human nature is the 
highest goal for all the rest. "God's 
plan of salvation for the general race 
of Adam," it is claimed, "is to extend 
to each member of it, during the 



50 STUDIES IN 

millennium, the offer of eternal life 
upon the terms of the new covenant 
sealed for all with the precious blood 
of the Lamb. But there is no sug- 
gestion anywhere that immortality, the 
divine nature, will ever be offered or 
granted to any except the elect Church 
of the gospel age — the little flock, 
the bride, the Lamb's wife. For the 
others of Adam's race the offer will 
be 'restitution' to life and health and 
perfection of human nature — the same 
that Adam possessed as the earthly 
image of God before his fall from 
grace into sin and death." 1 

3. Special theory on the cleansing of 
the sanctuary. This theory has ref- 
erence to the statement in Daniel 
viii. 14, that the sanctuary should be 
cleansed after twenty-three hundred 
evenings and mornings. Understand- 
ing this to mean twenty-three hundred 
days, and the days to be symbolical 



i Studies in the Scriptures, V. 402. See also I. 181, II. 202, 
IV. 618, VI. 35, 94, 116. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 51 

of so many years, Millerite chron- 
ologers, reckoning from the decree of 
Artaxerxes for the rebuilding of Jeru- 
salem, found a terminus for the period 
in 1843 or 1844, at which time Christ 
would come, and the sanctuary, that 
is, the earth or the land of Palestine, 
would be cleansed. As the result 
did not correspond with the prediction, 
it was concluded by some that, while 
the cleansing actually took place at 
the specified date, it was given a 
wrong connection by being applied to 
the earthly sanctuary instead of the 
heavenly. This revised interpretation 
was accepted as authentic by the 
Seventh-Day Adventists. In a current 
statement of their "Fundamental Prin- 
ciples" we read these propositions: 
"That the sanctuary of the new 
covenant is the tabernacle of God in 
heaven; that this is the sanctuary 
to be cleansed at the end of two thou- 
sand and three hundred days, what 
is termed its cleansing being, in this 



52 STUDIES IN 

case, as in the type, simply the en- 
trance of the high priest into the 
most holy place, to finish the round 
of service connected therewith by 
making the atonement and removing 
from the sanctuary the sins which 
had been transferred to it by means 
of the ministration in the first apart- 
ment; and this work in the antitype, 
beginning in 1844, consists in actually 
blotting out the sins of believers, and 
occupies a brief, but indefinite space 
of time at the conclusion of which 
the work of mercy for the world will 
be finished, and the second advent 
of Christ will take place." * 

4. Affirmation of the perpetuity of 
the Sabbath law. This peculiarity in 
the scheme of the Seventh-Day Ad- 
ventists has in itself little connection 
with our theme. But in its treatment 
the writers of that communion have 
implicated it with the imagery of 

1 Nos. 9, 10. Compare J. N. Andrews, The Sanctuary and 
Twenty-three Hundred Days; Bible Readings for the Home 
Circle, 1914, pp. 232, 237, 243. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 53 

the book of Revelation, and have 
given it such a distinct eschatological 
association that a brief reference to it 
is justified. Thus J. N. Andrews 
attributes the putting of Sunday in 
place of the seventh day to the har- 
lot Babylon, denounces the Christian 
world as wearing the mark of the 
beast and virtually worshiping the 
beast in its observance of the pagan 
festival of Sunday, and finds in the 
Seventh-Day people the object of the 
predicted persecution by the beast and 
its allies. 1 A similar strain is indulged 
in by Uriah Smith. He sees in the 
observance of the Lord's Sabbath that 
which "distinguishes the servants of 
God from those who worship the 
beast," and discovers in Protestant 
America the adverse power which is 
to make war upon those who keep 
the commandments of God and have 
the testimony of Jesus. 2 The views 

1 The Three Messages of Revelation xiv. 6-12. 
* Thoughts on the Book of Revelation, 1865, pp. 127, 128, 
207, 208. 



54 RECENT ADVENTISM 

expressed by Andrews and Smith are 
repeated in detail in a recent book. 1 

Were it admissible to point a moral 
in this connection, we should be 
tempted to remark upon the striking 
illustration, furnished by the matter 
of the foregoing paragraph, of how a 
secondary and dubious item of be- 
lief, when once turned into a sectarian 
postulate, can be so magnified in the 
imagination of its advocates as to 
govern the whole outlook and to hide 
the very sun in the heavens. 

i Bible Readings for the Home Circle, 1914, pp. 257, 272, 273, 
277, 445, 449. 



CHAPTER III 

CARDINAL ASSUMPTIONS IN ADVEN- 
TIST ARGUMENTATION 

1. The need of an essentially literal 
construction of Old Testament prophecy. 
Pronounced millennarians have as- 
serted this demand, especially in rela- 
tion to the fortunes of Israel. Many 
predictions bearing on this theme have, 
they claim, been literally fulfilled; and 
they infer that the remaining pre- 
dictions await a fulfillment of the same 
order, and are not to be disposed of 
as accommodated, poetical, or sym- 
bolical picturings. Most of the Ad- 
ventist bodies, though stanch advocates 
of literalism where it serves their 
creed, do not find, as has been noticed, 
a demand in prophecy for a great and 
special career of Israel in the future. 
But other representatives of modern 

55 



56 STUDIES IN 

Adventism commonly recognize that 
demand, and emphasize in this rela- 
tion the literal character of Old Tes- 
tament forecasts. A specially strong 
putting of this point of view is given 
by West as follows: "A false spiritual- 
izing, allegorizing, and idealizing inter- 
pretation has contributed to rob the 
predictions concerning Israel of their 
realistic value. . . . The Church does 
not understand the present age, nor 
its relation to the coming age, nor 
Israel's relation to both, and to the 
nations, and to the Church herself. 
And this blindness will continue until 
the false systems of interpretation, by 
which it has been caused, are rejected. 
Until the glamour of this enchantment 
has been dissolved, it is impossible to 
understand either the organic structure 
of prophecy, the mission of the Church, 
the position of our present age, Israel's 
place in history, the Antichrist, the 
ages and the ends, the difference be- 
tween the kingdom and the Church, 



RECENT ADVENTISM 57 

or the time of Christ's appearing.' n 
"A large portion of the Old Tes- 
tament/' writes Peters, "embracing 
entire chapters and continuous proph- 
ecies, has not yet been fulfilled, owing 
to the postponement of the kingdom 
and the designs of mercy, and hence 
the period of the Christian Church is 
an intercalary one extending through 
the times of the Gentiles; and if we 
desire to know its destiny, its ultimate 
condition in the consummation, the 
Old must be compared with the New." 2 
The postponement of fulfillment, he 
goes on to urge, is in no sense an 
annulment. The literal significance of 
the prophecies is yet to be realized, 
dimming contends that the vivid pic- 
tures of Israel's restoration contained 
in Isa. xi. 9, xvi. 1, 2, lx, Jer. xxxi. 
28, 31-34, Ezek. xxxvii, Zech. viii. 
21-23, xii-xiv, and Rom. xi obtained 
nothing like an adequate fulfillment in 



J The Thousand Years in Both Testaments, Preface. 
* The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 158. 



58 STUDIES IN 

the scanty recovery of the nation from 
the Babylonish captivity, and that 
consequently we must look to the 
future for the proper counterpart. 1 
A. J. Gordon remarks: "A literal ful- 
fillment of threatenings upon Israel 
argues a literal fulfillment of prom- 
ises/' 2 Like statements could be cited 
from A. B. Simpson and others. 

2. Reproduction by Christ and the 
apostles of the literal Old Testament 
conception of the kingdom. Those pre- 
millennialists who subscribe to the pre- 
ceding assumption naturally subscribe 
to this also. A very full and em- 
phatic expression of it is furnished in 
the magnum opus of pre-millennialism, 
the massive work of Peters. Having 
asserted, as an undeniable fact, "that 
the Jews held to a personal coming 
of the Messiah, the literal restoration 
of the Davidic throne and kingdom, 
the personal reign of Messiah on Da- 

J The End or the Proximate Signs of the Close of the Dispen- 
sation, pp. 142-158. 
* Ecce Venit, p. 274. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 59 

vicTs throne, the resultant exaltation 
of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation, 
and the fulfillment of the millennial 
descriptions in that reign," 1 he sub- 
joins these statements: "John the Bap- 
tist, Jesus, and the disciples employed 
the phrases, 'kingdom of heaven/ 'king- 
dom of God/ etc., in accord with the 
usage of the Jews. . . . Neither in the 
New Testament nor in any of the 
patristic writings do we find the least 
hint that the doctrine of the kingdom 
excited any controversy with the Jews, 
which it undoubtedly would have done 
if antagonistic to the Jewish view. 
This is strong corroborative evidence 
that the doctrine was in accordance 
with the Jewish Messianic expecta- 
tions." 2 No sentences in the Gospels, 
our author claims, involve an opposite 
conclusion. Referring to the petition 
in the Lord's Prayer for the coming 
of the kingdom, he says: "Pre-millen- 



i The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 183. 
2 Ibid., I. 195, 467. 



60 STUDIES IN 

narians are a unit in the application 
of this petition to a future Messianic 
kingdom at the second advent" 1 As 
respects the words of Christ, "The 
kingdom of God is within you," he 
interprets them as meaning that the 
proper seat of the kingdom is within 
the limits of the covenant nation. 2 

3. Continuance in the early post- 
apostolic Church of the literal view of 
the kingdom and of its destined in- 
stallation at the second advent. The 
teaching of the early Church up to 
the middle of the third century, ac- 
cording to the customary assumption 
in Adventist argumentation, was of 
identical tenor with that derived from 
the Old Testament prophets by Christ 
and the apostles. The literal view of 
the kingdom was thoroughly dominant. 
That this valid conception was sub- 
sequently crowded out was due, on 
the one hand, to the intrusion of 



1 The Theocratic Kingdom, I. 695. 

2 Ibid., II. 42. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 61 

Alexandrian or Originistic allegorizing 
and, on the other, to the bent of a 
worldly Church to exalt itself over- 
much by overrating the significance of 
the present dispensation or the times 
of the Gentiles. 1 

4. The identity of the fourth empire 
in the book of Daniel with the Roman, 
and the persistence of this empire in 
some form till the second advent. While 
the first part of this assumption was 
by no means, prior to the closing 
decades of the nineteenth century, the 
exclusive property of the advocates of 
a pronounced Adventism, such advo- 
cates had a special motive to cling 
to it tenaciously, as well as to the 
second part of the assumption. The 
double premise provided them with the 
means of citing prophecy for a future 
introduction of the kingdom, and 
served as a convenient basis in making 
calculations as to the time of that 



1 Seiss, The Last Times, p. 248; Peters, The Theocratic King- 
dom, I. 39, 244, 326, 499. 



62 STUDIES IN 

introduction; in other words, as to 
the time of the second advent. It is 
no cause for surprise, therefore, to find 
the champions of Adventism, whatever 
their differences on other points, sub- 
stantially unanimous in holding both 
clauses of the specified assumption. 

5. The existence in the Bible, and 
especially in the books of Daniel and 
Revelation, of unequivocal means of 
determining, at least approximately, the 
time of the second advent. The same 
vitality of interest in calculating the 
time of the Lord's return cannot be 
imputed to the entire fist of writers 
cited in these pages as advocates of 
a pronounced Adventism. It is true 
nevertheless that most of them recog- 
nize in the Bible important data for 
measuring the existing dispensation and 
concur in the judgment that its end 
is in all probability near at hand. 
In enumerating the biblical data they 
find it very convenient, not to say 
essential to their eschatological scheme, 



RECENT ADVENTISM 63 

to make certain interpretations which 
have the common aim of giving a 
very far-reaching scope to prophetical 
forecasts. 

One of the interpretations subserv- 
ing this aim is that in which "days," 
as mentioned in prophetical writings, 
are construed to mean years. By 
this exegetical expedient events which 
otherwise would need to be placed 
near to the time of the biblical writer 
can be carried over to a recent or 
future age. Thus the twelve hundred 
and ninety days of Daniel xii. 11 can 
be understood to mean as many years. 
This year-day theory, as held by its 
exponents, applies in various connec- 
tions where longer divisions than days 
are mentioned, since these divisions are 
resolved into days and these are then 
taken as symbolical of years. In 
this way the "seven times" of Levit- 
icus xxvi. 18 yield twenty-five hundred 
and twenty years, a time being equal 
to a year and a year being reckoned 



64 STUDIES IN 

as containing three hundred and sixty 
days. By a like process the three 
and one half "times" of Daniel xii. 7 
furnish a period of twelve hundred 
and sixty years, and the forty-two 
months of Revelation xiii. 5 one of 
the same length. A free employment 
of this plan of interpretation is uni- 
versally characteristic of the writers 
representing professional Adventism, 
and has been sanctioned, either di- 
rectly or indirectly, by not a few 
outside their ranks. 1 

A second special interpretation in 
the interest of chronological extension 
is that which construes the "seven 
kings" of Revelation xvii. 10 as suc- 
cessive forms of the government of 
Rome. Guinness gives the following 
list of the classes of rulers: kings, 
consuls, dictators, decemvirs, military 
tribunes, military emperors, and des- 

1 Elliott, Horae Apocalypticae, IV. 237; Guinness, The Ap- 
proaching End of the Age, pp. 85, 222, 223, 346; Seiss, The Last 
Times, pp. 269-273; Gordon, Ecce Venit, pp. 203-206; Simpson, 
The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 113, 218-247. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 65 

potic emperors. 1 William Miller as- 
signs the seventh place to "kings," 
understanding by them the rulers of 
the modern States of Europe. 2 Litch 
and Simpson bring the series down 
into the present age by putting the 
papacy, regarded as heir to the power 
of Rome, in the seventh place. 3 Uriah 
Smith prefers to identify the papacy 
with an eighth who is of the seven, 
as mentioned in Revelation xvii. II. 4 
A third special interpretation 
adapted to the desire to extend 
prophetic forecasts across a very wide 
field consists in making the ten toes of 
the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, 
also the ten horns of Daniel vii. 7 and 
of Revelation xiii. 1, xvii. 3, 7, 12, to 
be symbolical of ten kingdoms, which 
are to be identified with divisions of 
the Roman empire and to be regarded 
as still subsisting on the European 

1 The Approaching End of the Age, p. 162. 

2 Lectures, p. 80. 

3 The Probability of the Second Coming of Christ about A. D. 
1843; The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 116. 

* Thoughts on the Book of Revelation, pp. 269, 270. 



66 STUDIES IN 

continent. William Miller, using mod- 
ern names, gave the list of the ten 
kingdoms as follows: France, Britain, 
Spain, Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, Aus- 
tria, Lombardy, Rome, and Ravenna. 1 
Seiss taught, "These ten kingdoms 
originally embraced the Huns, the 
Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Franks, 
the Sueves, the Burgundians, the Her- 
ulians and Thuringians, the Saxons and 
the Longobards. At present they per- 
haps embrace the three Papal States, 
Naples, Tuscany, Austria, Great Brit- 
ain, France, Portugal, and Spain." 2 
Miles Grant specified the original ten 
divisions as follows: Vandals, Gepidae, 
Saxons, Britons, Suevi, Ostrogoths, Al- 
lemanni, Burgundians, Visigoths and 
Franks. 3 Litch gave this enumera- 
tion: Huns, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, 
Franks, Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians, 
Heruli, Anglo-Saxons, and Lombards; 
and the like enumeration was repeated 

1 Lectures, p. 46. 

2 The Last Times, p. 173. 

3 Positive Theology, p. 359. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 67 

by Uriah Smith. 1 Cumming wrote out 
a list which differs in some particulars 
from any one of the preceding. 2 Vari- 
ous other writers, while confidently 
asserting the reference in prophecy to 
ten still surviving kingdoms, have pre- 
ferred, with Peters, 3 not to attempt 
to name them. 

A further special interpretation se- 
cures a long reach for prophetic inti- 
mations by applying certain symbols 
in Daniel and the apocalypse to papal 
Rome and its predestined overthrow. 
Here belong the little horn of Daniel 
vii. 8, and Babylon, the mother of 
harlots, as described in Revelation 
xvii. So common has been the given 
application of these symbols that one 
would need to search narrowly to find 
exceptions among stanch exponents of 
the Adventist scheme. We notice, 
however, a writer who made Napoleon 
III a rival of the pope as respects the 

1 Thoughts on the Book of Daniel, p. 62. 

2 Apocalyptic Sketches, p. 281. 

» The Theocratic Kingdom, II. 707. 



68 STUDIES IN 

role of Antichrist, and who testified 
that others entertained a like view 
of the French emperor. 1 

Still another special interpretation, 
which serves the purpose of connecting 
prophecy with the present and the 
impending age, might be mentioned. 
Out of the great storehouse of Daniel 
and the book of Revelation various 
writers derive intimations of the pre- 
cise epoch, if not of the downfall of 
the Ottoman empire, at least of the 
decisive beginning of its fatal decline. 
Cumming placed this crisis at 1820, 
William Miller at 1839, and Guinness 
said it might be placed either at 1844 
or 1919, according to the starting- 
point assumed in the reckoning. 

In applying the biblical data de- 
duced by the foregoing interpretations, 
Adventist chronologers have reached 
somewhat diverse results, inasmuch as 
they have not been agreed as to the 
proper starting points in the reckoning 

i M. Baxter, The Great Crisis at the Period of 1867 to 1875. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 69 

— a matter which the biblical state- 
ments often leave quite indeterminate. 
This fact may be illustrated in rela- 
tion to the longest of the periods 
of which note is taken, the twenty- 
five hundred and twenty years deduced 
from Leviticus xxvi. 18, and often 
characterized as the "Times of the 
Gentiles." William Miller reckoned 
from the captivity of Manasseh — lo- 
cated by him at B. C. 677— and so 
found the terminus in A. D. 1843. 
Guinness, taking the final conquest of 
Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar in B. C. 
598 as the latest possible date, con- 
cluded that the terminus on the basis 
of lunar years would be 1848, and on 
the basis of solar years 1923. C. T. 
Russell, placing Nebuchadnezzar's con- 
quest of Israel at B. C. 606 and 
reckoning from that date, concluded 
that the twenty-five hundred and 
twenty years would end in 1914. Bax- 
ter, assuming that the captivity under 
Manasseh is to be dated at B. C. 647, 



70 STUDIES IN 

placed the end of the Times of the 
Gentiles at 1873-75. 

The element of dubiety in relation 
to starting points may also be illus- 
trated in connection with the period 
assigned to the papacy. This period, 
according to a pretty wide agreement, 
is twelve hundred and sixty years, 
corresponding to the number of days 
in the "time, times, and half a time" 
of Daniel xii. 7 and in the "forty and 
two months" of Revelation xiii. 5. 
But from what point the reckoning 
should start has remained a matter 
of considerable uncertainty. Miller 
and his school of writers placed the 
beginning of the papal epoch at A. D. 
538, making this the date of an edict 
of Justinian which was estimated to 
be very serviceable to the supremacy 
of the Roman bishop. 1 They accord- 
ingly located the end of the papal 
epoch at 1798 when Napoleon cast the 

1 They did not intend to deny that the edict was issued in 533, 
but found it convenient to fix upon 538 as the time when it be- 
came effective. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 71 

reigning pope into the dust and ef- 
fected, if not the destruction of the 
papacy, a great abridgment of its 
prestige. Others, as Elliott and Cum- 
ming, putting the decree of Justinian 
several years earlier, locate the ter- 
minus of the twelve hundred and 
sixty years near the opening of the 
French Revolution. Guinness con- 
cludes that three possible dates for 
the beginning of the given period 
may be specified — the year 533, marked 
by the decree of Justinian; the year 
606, when the Emperor Phocas took 
action favorable to the universal juris- 
diction of the Roman bishop; and 
the year 663, when Pope Vitalian 
enjoined the services of the Church 
to be read in Latin throughout Chris- 
tendom. The terminal dates corre- 
sponding to these several beginnings 
would be 1793, 1866-70, and 1923. 
Gordon writes that inasmuch as the 
papacy came in by stages, it may be 
expected to go out in the same fashion, 



72 STUDIES IN 

and specifies the years 1790, 1848, and 
1868 as marking important steps to- 
ward the final overthrow. 

It has been noticed that in the 
Millerite calculations Daniel viii. 14 
was understood to name twenty-three 
hundred days, and these to be sym- 
bolical of years. A question may be 
raised as to whether the original 
specifies twenty-three hundred days, 
since it names "evenings and morn- 
ings," and the sum of the two may 
be regarded as expressed by the stated 
number. A double ground of dubiety, 
therefore, attaches to the construction 
put upon this verse, since both the 
starting point and the length of the 
period assumed in that construction 
can be challenged. A double ground 
of uncertainty attaches likewise to the 
Millerite conclusion based on the 
twelve hundred and ninety days of 
Daniel xii. 11. Perhaps it would be 
better to say that the conclusion rests 
upon an uncertainty as to the starting 



RECENT ADVENTISM 73 

point contemplated by the biblical 
writer and upon a plain mistaking of 
the event to which he refers, since 
there are good reasons for identifying 
that event with the interruption of 
the Jewish temple service rather than 
with the abolition of paganism in the 
Roman empire. 1 

The intelligent reader, we surmise, 
will gain the impression, in advance 
of any formal criticism, that the 
chronological construction of recent 
Adventism rests upon very uncertain 
foundations. We hope, before the con- 
clusion of the next chapter, to afford 
matter adapted to strengthen that 
impression. 

1 Thus the doing away with the continual (Dan. viii. 13, 14) 
has often been interpreted in Adventist circles. It is to be ob- 
served, however, that a recent interpretation makes the continual 
to refer to Christ's mediation in heaven as being thrust aside in 
the intention of the Roman apostasy (Bible Readings for the 
Home Circle, 1914, pp. 227-229). 



CHAPTER IV 

CRITICISM OF THE CARDINAL 
ASSUMPTIONS 

1. Considering these assumptions 
in the order in which they have been 
given, we notice, in the first place, 
the literal character claimed for the 
Old Testament forecasts of the king- 
dom and of Israel's destined eminence 
in the kingdom. This is no well- 
established postulate } and a careful 
review of the conditions does not 
permit that it should be rated as 
even probable. The Old Testament 
prophets, as sharing in the common 
limitations of men, were compelled, to 
a large extent, to make use of local 
colors in picturing the unfoldments of 
the kingdom of God in the world. 
They could not deny their environ- 
ment in this matter any more than 
we can deny our environment when we 

74 



RECENT ADVENTISM 75 

attempt to picture the immortal life. 
The city with its walls and gates, the 
trees and fountains, the harpers harp- 
ing with their harps, the marriage 
supper of the Lamb — what are these 
but symbols taken from our visible 
surroundings wherewith we attempt to 
picture that which lies beyond the 
range of clear knowledge? New Tes- 
tament writers filled with the pro- 
phetic spirit could not do better than 
to employ such symbols. Plainly, then, 
it would be unwarrantable to expect 
the Hebrew prophets to escape accom- 
modation to their surroundings in their 
pictures of the fortunes in store for 
the kingdom of God upon earth. In 
those surroundings were potent factors 
— such as the records of the national 
history, national aspirations, convic- 
tions and hopes wrought into the 
religious fiber of the earnest and the 
devout — which combined to place Is- 
rael before the minds of the prophets 
as occupying a central place in the 



76 STUDIES IN 

kingdom. To ask them to paint that 
kingdom in its full universality and 
its transcendence of national limita- 
tions would be asking them to deny 
the horizon within which they stood, 
and to place themselves within one of 
a vastly different order. They wrote 
as they were under practical com- 
pulsion to write, and as might be 
expected of them, even were it in the 
divine plan that the Jewish dispensa- 
tion should survive the installation of 
the Christian dispensation only in and 
through the great religious contribution 
which it should make to Christianity. 
In the higher point of view, to sur- 
vive in this endlessly fruitful and 
inestimable contribution can easily ap- 
pear as more honorable and glorious 
than to be appointed heir to any 
sort of temporal position and distinc- 
tion. A petty nation exercising earthly 
jurisdiction in Palestine is a far less 
enkindling subject to contemplate than 
Israel made immortal in its spiritual 



RECENT ADVENTISM 77 

work and going forward in the power 
of an universal religion to make con- 
quest of the world. 

Again a ground for qualifying the 
literal character of many of the de- 
scriptions penned by the Hebrew 
prophets lies in the fact that these 
descriptions are in the form of im- 
passioned poetry. Many of them no 
more need to be construed as matter- 
of-fact statements than does the decla- 
ration in the Psalms that the righteous 
man is safeguarded by angelic hands 
from dashing his foot against a stone. 
Furthermore, we are warned against 
taking the path of strict literalism by 
the plainly intended application of 
some of the most glowing of the 
prophetical forecasts to the fortunes 
of Israel in a future no further ahead 
than the restoration from the Assyrian 
and Babylonian captivities. Observe 
how elements in the environment of 
their epoch enter into the fervid strains 
of Isaiah (chapters xi, xxv, xxx, xlv, 



78 STUDIES IN 

lii), and of Jeremiah (chapter xxxii). 
If the prophets could employ such 
language in describing the resurrection 
of the nation from the desolations 
wrought by Assyrian and Babylonian 
power, what demand is there for taking 
their high-wrought figures as portray- 
ing destinies not to be fulfilled till 
thousands of years after the first 
coming of the Messiah? Possibly in 
one or another of these chapters pre- 
monition vaguely transcends the era 
with which the prophet is more di- 
rectly concerned; but in any case his 
glowing imagery is applied in large 
part to the era of Israel's recovery 
from the Assyrian and Babylonian 
woes, and presumes upon the existence 
in the neighborhood of Israel of polit- 
ical factors which have long since 
vanished. Undeniable illustration is 
therefore given of the wide swing of 
prophetic idealism; and we see that 
millennarians make gratuitous demands 
when they contend that a far-reaching 



RECENT ADVENTISM 79 

and substantially literal fulfillment of 
the ideal pictures of the prophets is 
still to be witnessed. A more reliable 
plan of interpretation is that which 
respects the point of view expressed 
in these words of the eminent Old 
Testament scholar, A. B. Davidson: 
"Prophecy is what the prophet in 
his age and circumstances and dis- 
pensation meant; fulfillment is the 
form in which his great religious con- 
ceptions will gain validity in other 
ages, in different circumstances, and 
under another dispensation. Certain 
elements, therefore, of the relative, 
the circumstantial, and the dispensa- 
tional, must be stripped away and 
not expected to go into fulfillment." 1 

The contention that the threaten- 
ings against Israel were literally ful- 
filled, and that accordingly a literal 
fulfillment of promises, or a fulfillment 
going very far beyond that effected 



1 Article Prophecy and Prophets in Hastings's Dictionary of 
the Bible. 



80 STUDIES IN 

in the recovery from the Babylonish 
captivity, is to be expected, finds an 
answer in these considerations: Com- 
plete fulfillment of promises is to be 
regarded as dependent upon complete 
national response to ethical and re- 
ligious conditions. Furthermore, the 
literal fulfillment that went on record 
is by no means to be rated as scanty. 
When Israel had been trodden down 
and dispersed by the Assyrians and 
Babylonians, according to all earthly 
analogy the day of absolute and irre- 
mediable doom had come. That she 
was reinstated and enabled to become 
the theater of the most marvelous 
chapter in human history, was in 
virtue of an astonishing national resur- 
rection. The illuminated minds of the 
prophets, foreseeing a people as good as 
dead and buried thus coming forth and 
entering into the great ways of Jeho- 
vah, naturally felt justified, and were 
justified, in sketching the anticipated 
deliverance in fervid speech. Much 



RECENT ADVENTISM 81 

of what they wrote can be seen, if 
we put aside a false numerical standard, 
to have its counterpart in the mar- 
velous historical outcome. Add now 
due allowance for the poetical strain 
in prophetical delineations, and the 
reason put forward for demanding a 
further and more distinctive fulfill- 
ment may be regarded as substantially 
overcome. 

In writing upon this topic we realize 
that the verdict of modern critical 
scholarship is not likely to make much 
impression upon the majority of those 
devoted to an emphatic Adventist 
creed. Higher criticism is very com- 
monly mentioned by them in terms 
of wholesale denunciation. This may 
be controversially convenient, but it 
is not judicial. Extreme views may 
have been advocated by one and 
another critic; but careful and thor- 
oughly sustained inductions have also 
been furnished in the sphere of modern 
critical investigation of the Old Tes- 



82 STUDIES IN 

tament. When Adventist apologists 
dismiss or ignore these, on no better 
ground than an indiscriminate denun- 
ciation of the critics, they would do 
well to inquire seriously whether their 
motive is the desire to guard the Bible 
from injustice, and not rather the 
importunate wish to shield their own 
special interpretations of the Bible 
from disquieting attack. 

2. The next cardinal assumption, or 
that which affirms the reproduction by 
Christ and the apostles of the literal 
conception of the kingdom, as normally 
extracted from the Old Testament, is 
subject to challenge on account of its 
radical one-sidedness. It is true that 
a literal notion of the kingdom of 
God as an earthly dominion, in which 
the Jewish nation should have the 
primacy, was quite firmly intrenched 
in the minds of the Jews at the com- 
ing of Christ. It is true also that 
there are some indications that this 



RECENT ADVENTISM 83 

notion had gained such a lodgment in 
the minds of the primitive disciples 
that it was difficult to dislodge it, 
or to force it into the background, 
all at once. But, on the other hand, 
it is to be observed, that a contrasted 
view came within the circle of New 
Testament thought, a view accordant 
with the placing of the major em- 
phasis on the spiritual nature of the 
kingdom. An ample basis for this 
improved conception was supplied in 
the discourses of Christ. The Master, 
it may be granted, gave a place to a 
certain outward aspect of the kingdom, 
in presenting it betimes as something 
future and destined to be brought 
to manifestation by a glorious dis- 
play of divine power. But he pro- 
vided nevertheless an offset to Jewish 
narrowness and externalism on the 
theme of the kingdom, and that in 
a twofold way. On the one hand he 
lifted the notion of the kingdom above 
the Jewish plane in substantially dis- 



84 STUDIES IN 

carding the national connections by 
which it was bound in contemporary 
thought. He contrasted the new order 
of things which he came to establish 
with the ancient Old Testament order 
(Matt. ix. 17). He declared that 
many shall come from the east and 
the west and occupy a place in the 
kingdom which Israelites shall be found 
unworthy to occupy (Matt. viii. 11, 
12), and that as a people they shall 
be dispossessed of the Lord's vineyard 
and see it let out to other husbandmen 
(Matt. xxi. 33-45). In harmony with 
this recession of the national point 
of view he gave injunction for the 
preaching of the gospel, not simply 
within Jewish boundaries, but to all 
nations (Matt, xxviii. 19). On the 
other hand, in numerous instances he 
spiritualized the notion of the king- 
dom by using words which obviously 
imply that it is a present and interior 
reality. Such an implication lies in 
the words which Christ addressed to 



RECENT ADVENTISM 85 

the Pharisees: "The publicans and 
harlots go into the kingdom of God 
before you." "Ye shut the kingdom 
of heaven against men; for ye enter 
not in yourselves, neither suffer ye 
them that are entering in to enter" 
(Matt. xxi. 31, xxiii. 13). The same 
view is embraced in Christ's approving 
response to the scribe, "Thou art not 
far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 
xii. 34). The kingdom is also de- 
scribed as here and now in the words 
with which Christ replied to Pharisaic 
calumny. "If I by the Spirit of God 
cast out devils, then is the kingdom 
of God come unto you" (Matt. xii. 28). 
The same may be said of the whole 
list of parables in which the kingdom 
is likened to the sprouting and growth 
of grain, to the development of a 
mustard seed, to the working of leaven, 
to the finding of a treasure hid in 
the field, and to the obtaining at large 
cost of the goodly pearl. Further, the 
collocation of petitions in the Lord's 



86 STUDIES IN 

Prayer contains a plain suggestion 
that the coming of the kingdom is 
identical with the doing of God's 
will on earth as it is done in heaven. 
Very clearly the present subsistence 
and the spiritual character of the 
kingdom are declared in this sentence: 
"The kingdom of God cometh not 
with observation, neither shall men 
say, Lo, here, or there! for lo, the 
kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 
xvii. 20, 21). * In short, it is quite 
evident that advocates of pronounced 
Adventism have, in numerous in- 
stances, constructed a much too nar- 
row mold for Christ's teaching. The 
import of that teaching is not to be 
judged by reference to a few phrases 
which he may have used in accom- 
modation to contemporary modes of 
speech. Intrinsically so comprehensive 

1 The possible, but less eligible reading, "The kingdom of God 
is in the midst of you," does not contradict the spiritual character 
of the kingdom, for if present, and still hidden from observers, 
it must be in the invisible order. G. N. H. Peters's interpreta- 
tion, as noticed in a previous connection, is incongruous with the 
whole gist of the passage- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 87 

a theme as that of the kingdom is 
adapted to give rise to a variety of 
representations. Viewed as to its 
source and central principle the king- 
dom is the realized moral rule of 
God; viewed as to the relations of 
its subjects, it is an ideal society. 
Regarded as a sum of spiritual goods 
which accompany or result from the 
realized rule of God, the kingdom can 
be spoken of as a treasure to be 
received; regarded as the domain where 
a divine and heavenly regime obtains, 
it can be described as a province or 
sphere to be entered. As already 
inaugurated and in process of de- 
velopment, the kingdom is here and 
now; as awaiting a great consum- 
mating stage, it is yet to come. All 
these aspects are represented explic- 
itly or implicitly in the teachings of 
Christ. 1 

In respect of the apostles, as indi- 
cated above, it can hardly be affirmed 

1 Compare the author's New Testament Theology, pp. 73-79. 



88 STUDIES IN 

that in the first stage they came up 
to the broad spiritual view of the 
Master. The statement at the open- 
ing of the book of Acts rather implies 
that they did not. But as they went 
forward, and especially as they dis- 
covered that the Gentile world was 
the great field of promise for the 
gospel, the Jewish restrictions attached 
to their thought of the kingdom fell 
away- Nowhere in the epistles is 
there a note of the idea that the 
kingdom is a specially Jewish affair. 1 
Paul, on the contrary, declared the 
middle wall of partition to have been 
broken down, and repudiated distinc- 
tions between Jew and Greek as for- 
eign to the gospel dispensation (Eph. 
ii. 13, 14; Rom. ii. 28; Gal. ill. 28, 
29). He expressed, indeed, a generous 
hope as to the ultimate conversion 
of his kinsmen (Rom. xi), but forecast 
for them no sort of temporal or spir- 



1 Compare Samuel Waldegrave, New Testament Millennarian- 
ism, p. 109. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 89 

itual primacy. Furthermore, he dem- 
onstrated that Christ's view of the 
kingdom, as being in a prominent 
aspect a present and interior reality, 
claimed recognition in his thought, for 
he described it as "righteousness and 
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" 
(Rom. xvi. 17). So apostolic thinking 
went on to transcend the Jewish stand- 
point which has been so largely repro- 
duced in modern Adventism. The 
idea of a future advent remained, 
indeed, in the mind of the apostles; 
but the general idea of an advent 
is one thing; the notion of a visible, 
and especially of a Judaic, kingdom 
on earth is quite another thing. 

3. The assumption relative to the 
prevalence, in the first patristic age, 
of the millennarian creed, or the doc- 
trine of the imminence of the visible 
kingdom of Christ, has an appreciable 
element of truth. But two qualifying 
considerations are entitled to notice. 



90 STUDIES IN 

The first of these applies to the alleged 
fact. While it is true that a consider- 
able proportion of the early fathers 
were rather pronounced millennarians, 
it is not true that the whole body 
can be so classed. Papias, Justin 
Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Commo- 
dianus, and Lactantius undoubtedly 
taught the genuine creed of millen- 
narianism. But that creed is not 
found in the writings of Clement of 
Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Tatian, 
Athenagoras and Theophilus. Neither 
is it found in the pretty full collection 
of the writings of Cyprian or in that 
of Clement of Alexandria. It was 
resolutely opposed by Origen, Diony- 
sius, and others of the Alexandrian 
school from the middle of the third 
century onward. We conclude, there- 
fore, that the broad statement about 
the prevalence in the first Christian 
age of the notion of the visible earthly 
reign of Christ, which modern millen- 
narians are accustomed to cite from 



RECENT ADVENTISM 91 

Gieseler, needs to be cut down appre- 
ciably. The second of the qualifying 
considerations applies to the exegetical 
competency of the first advocates of 
millennarianism. Their modern suc- 
cessors tell us that the Alexandrians 
who took up the role of opposition 
were given to an ultra-idealistic inter- 
pretation. But cannot literalism be 
as extravagant as idealism? Are the 
crude representations in which Papias 
and Irenseus indulged respecting the 
fruitfulness to be exhibited by the 
earth in the millennial age to be 
preferred to Alexandrian allegorizing? 
Was Tertullian an exegete to be 
specially trusted? — the man who in 
his crass literalism supposed that re- 
generating efficacy was made an in- 
separable attachment of the baptismal 
water, so as necessarily to work the 
new birth in the candidate whom it 
might touch. In truth, may we not 
say that some of these early fathers 
were too nearly akin to the Jews 



92 STUDIES IN 

who were so imprisoned in the letter 
that they could not do justice to the 
spiritual character of Christ's kingdom? 
Origen and Augustine may have been 
faulty interpreters, but no good reason 
is apparent why Papias, Tertullian, 
and others of the early millennarians 
should be rated at a higher figure 
as exegetes. 

4. There are good reasons for chal- 
lenging both parts of the fourth as- 
sumption. The traditional view that 
the fourth kingdom depicted in the 
book of Daniel is to be identified with 
the Roman has to a very large extent 
been relinquished by recent scholar- 
ship. Among learned commentaries of 
a recent date that of H. H. Wright 
supports it; but it is resolutely rejected 
in those of Bevan, Behrmann, Driver, 
Prince, Farrar, and Charles, as also 
in Porter's Messages of the Apocalyptic 
Writers. It is the conviction of these 
scholars that the book of Daniel means, 



RECENT ADVENTISM 93 

in its representation of four successive 
kingdoms (chapters ii and vii), to 
interpose the Median Kingdom be- 
tween the Babylonian and the Per- 
sian, and so to assign the fourth place 
to the Greek kingdom or empire of 
Alexander and his successors, which, 
they claim, impressed Orientals as be- 
ing peculiarly characterized by crush- 
ing force. They note that, while the 
Medes can scarcely be reckoned as 
possessing a world-empire, they came 
to prominence in advance of the Per- 
sians, being the chief instrument in 
the destruction of Nineveh in B. C. 
607. It is admitted by them that in 
some passages of the book of Daniel 
the Medes and the Persians are spoken 
of as united into one power (v. 28, 
vi. 8, 12, 15); but this is explained, 
they assert, by the fact that in this 
book the Medes are viewed at two 
different stages. At the first stage 
they are regarded as constituting the 
second in the succession of empires, 



91 STUDIES IN 

while at the second stage they are 
regarded as being under the leader- 
ship of the Persians and consolidated 
with them. That they really are 
assigned a place in the list of em- 
pires is quite distinctly evidenced. The 
statement that the second kingdom 
was to be inferior to the first, or 
Babylonian (Dan. ii. 39), is far better 
suited to the Median than to the 
Persian dominion. More decisive still, 
we have the fact that Darius the Mede 
is mentioned as taking the kingdom, 
and is located immediately after a 
Babylonian ruler and before Cyrus, 
who is formally characterized as a 
Persian. As further supporting the 
theory of the interposition of a Median 
empire reference can be made to the 
tenor of the book. Most unmistakably 
it shows a dominating interest in the 
Greek empire, awarding to it by far 
the larger space. The conviction is 
scarcely to be avoided that for the 
apocalyptic writer this was the em- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 95 

pire fraught with the most fateful 
consequences to Israel. To all ap- 
pearance he was conscious of no occa- 
sion to forecast historical details beyond 
its limits. The book has thus a unity 
and consistency, on the supposition 
that the second empire was the Median 
and the fourth the Greek, which can- 
not be secured on the competing sup- 
position that the Roman empire was 
designed to occupy the fourth place. 
A hint that for the author the Roman 
power stood off on the horizon of the 
theater which he was surveying, in- 
stead of playing a principal part on 
that theater, is contained in the refer- 
ence to "the ships of Chittim" (xi. 30). 
"This must be an allusion to the 
Roman fleet which was sent to Egypt 
under Caius Popilius Laena, in order 
to force Antiochus to evacuate the 
country." 1 The description of iron 
strength as characteristic of the fourth 
kingdom is doubtless suitable to Rome; 

1 Prince, A Critical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, p. 182. 



96 STUDIES IN 

but it is also a true reflex of the im- 
pressiofi made upon the Oriental world 
by the amazing conquests of Alexander, 
while the representation that the iron 
was mixed with clay is peculiarly 
appropriate to the weakness which 
speedily befell Alexander's empire by 
reason of division. On the whole, the 
evidence for identifying the fourth 
empire in Daniel with the Greek is 
fairly decisive. 

The second part of the assumption 
under consideration, namely, the per- 
sistence of the Roman empire under 
the form of ten kingdoms or states, 
falls away of course with the disposal 
of the first part, so far as any pro- 
phetic forecast in the book of Daniel 
is concerned. And even if the first 
part were left standing, the basis for 
the second part would be utterly 
equivocal. The book of Daniel, under 
the symbol of ten horns (vii. 7, 24), 
speaks of ten kings, not of ten king- 
doms, and it savors of exegetical rash- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 97 

ness to transmute the one into the 
other. The context advises against 
such an expedient. An individual 
king, Antiochus Epiphanes — the "little 
horn" of Chapters vii and viii and 
the wicked prince of Chapters ix-xi — 
follows after the ten kings, and it is 
not to be supposed that the writer 
used the term "king" in different 
senses in closely connected clauses. 

The book of Daniel, then, affords 
no basis for postulating ten kingdoms, 
successive to the Roman empire, and 
capable, by any stretch of the imag- 
ination, of being identified with states 
in modern Europe. How is it with 
the book of Revelation? Adventist 
chronologers no doubt have a much 
better opportunity to discover here a 
foundation for their favorite theory 
respecting ten surviving kingdoms. 
There is no need to foist into the 
text a reference to the Roman empire. 
In its colossal might it stands at the 
front. As the writer of the book of 



98 STUDIES IN 

Daniel had a most vivid impression 
of the Greek empire, especially in 
relation to the Maccabean crisis, so 
the author of the book of Revelation 
was penetrated through and through 
with a sense of imperial Rome as a 
ruthless persecuting power, the re- 
morseless assailant of the Christian 
Church. Using imagery analogous to 
that of Daniel he describes this power 
as a monster with seven heads and 
ten horns (xvii. 3, 12). It is from these 
ten horns that Adventist chronologers 
are minded to get their ten kingdoms 
successive to the Roman empire. But 
the undertaking is bound to be abor- 
tive. The Revelator says nothing 
about ten distinct long-existing king- 
doms. What he mentions is ten kings 
acting as allies of one or more of the 
seven kings symbolized by the seven 
heads of the beast. His words are, 
"The ten horns that thou sawest are 
ten kings, which have received no 
kingdom as yet; but they receive 



RECENT ADVENTISM 99 

authority as kings, with the beast, for 
one hour. These have one mind, and 
they give their power and authority 
unto the beast" (xvii. 12, 13). This 
is plainly not a picture of kingdoms 
successive to Rome, but of kings con- 
temporary with one or another of the 
Roman emperors, probably with Nero 
redivims, characterized as an eighth 
who is of the seven. Just who they 
were is not clearly determined. They 
may have been Scythian satraps, and 
they may have been governors of 
Roman provinces. They cannot de- 
note rulers in modern Europe, for 
these are no contemporaries of Roman 
emperors. Modern rulers cannot even 
be counted successors of the em- 
perors in any strict sense. The Roman 
empire was never parceled out into 
ten kingdoms. The simple facts are 
that barbarian tribes came into one 
of its main divisions and used some 
of its materials for building up their 
several states — facts of an order with 



100 STUDIES IN 

which no descriptions in the book of 
Revelation correspond. 

5. It was noticed in connection with 
the assumption of the existence in the 
Bible of unequivocal means of de- 
termining, at least approximately, the 
time of the second advent, that Ad- 
ventist chronologers were under con- 
straint to resort to several special 
interpretations. The first of these, 
which makes the day of prophetical 
discourse to equal a year, has a very 
slender foundation in the Bible. Num- 
bers xiv. 34 and Ezekiel iv. 4-6 are 
cited in its behalf. But in the first 
of these passages no symbolical im- 
port is attached to the "days," the 
statement being that the rebellious 
Israelites should be punished as many 
years as it took days to spy out the 
land of Canaan; and in the second 
passage it is formally stated that the 
days employed by the prophet in pass- 
ing through a certain role should be 



RECENT ADVENTISM 101 

typical of years of national experience. 
In neither passage is there a hint 
that it was a habit of biblical writers 
to use days, without note or explana- 
tion, as symbolical of years. This 
Adventist principle of interpretation is 
therefore destitute of all positive bib- 
lical warrant. Furthermore, the vari- 
ous instances of its application can be 
characterized as gratuitous and ar- 
bitrary. Take the "seven times' ' of 
Leviticus xxvi. 18; why should it be 
imagined that this phrase incorporates 
a reference to a period of twenty-five 
hundred and twenty years? That it 
was meant to denote any specific 
interval of time is not at all probable. 
To say that the Israelites should be 
punished "seven times" was equivalent 
to saying that they should be pun- 
ished with unsparing severity, or up 
to the full limit of their deserts. When 
it is said in the book of Proverbs 
(xxiv. 16) that "the righteous man 
falls, seven times/' it is not meant 



102 STUDIES IN 

that he keeps up the process for 
twenty-five hundred and twenty years; 
neither does the text in Matthew's 
Gospel (xviii. 21, 22), which directs 
to forgive seventy times seven rather 
than seven, prescribe one hundred and 
seventy-six thousand and four hundred 
years as the period through which 
one's forgiveness of his brother should 
run. As a perfect number, seven sig- 
nified to the Hebrews completeness, 
and was often used for emphasis apart 
from definite chronological significance, 
as in the reference to silver being 
purified seven times (Psa. xii. 6). 
There is no reason to suppose that it 
was used otherwise in the given pas- 
sage in Leviticus. 

As respects the periods of days in 
the book of Daniel, the elimination 
of the supposition that the fourth 
empire was the Roman cancels the 
occasion and the possibility of con- 
struing them as periods of years. 
They find ready interpretation as spec- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 103 

ifying brief intervals viewed as ante- 
cedent to, or connected with, the 
deadly assault of Antiochus Epiphanes 
against the Jewish nation and religion. 

This conclusion respecting chrono- 
logical usage in Daniel gives support to 
the supposition of a like usage in the 
book of Revelation, as being a writing 
which found in no small degree its 
stylistic model in the earlier apocalypse. 
Furthermore, recent scholarship is as 
disinclined to read long periods into 
the Christian as into the Hebrew book. 

In one connection, doubtless, the 
book of Daniel uses a chronological 
term in the extended sense. The 
seventy weeks of ix. 24-27, by the 
common verdict of commentators, de- 
note seventy weeks of years, or four 
hundred and ninety years. By the 
extension of the seventy years specified 
by Jeremiah as the period of the 
Babylonish captivity, the writer was 
able to accommodate the prophecy of 
his predecessor to a later ordeal in 



104 STUDIES IN 

the history of the Jewish people, an 
ordeal bearing as fearful an aspect as 
the carrying away to Babylon. In 
thus applying the forecast of Jeremiah 
he was using a liberty, often illus- 
trated in later Judaism, of finding a 
secondary meaning in the biblical text. 
It would appear also that he followed 
a current Jewish chronology which, as 
is seen in the writings of Josephus and 
Demetrius, made the interval between 
the fall of Jerusalem (B. C. 586) and 
the reign of Antiochus considerably 
too long. But it is not necessary for 
our purpose to pass upon these points. 
It is enough to observe that the use 
in Daniel of the term "week" in the 
larger sense, in a single case, where 
the motive for the special use is 
quite intelligible, affords no substan- 
tial ground for magnifying his periods 
of days into periods of years. 1 

1 As illustrating the possible singularity of Adventist chronol- 
ogy, we notice the theory that sixty-nine of the seventy weeks 
of Daniel cover the history of Israel down to the crucifixion of 
Christ, and from that point Israel's history is suspended, so that 



RECENT ADVENTISM 105 

The second special interpretation 
which we noticed identifies the seven 
kings of Revelation xvii. 10 with seven 
successive forms of Roman govern- 
ment. The advocates of this inter- 
pretation have a difficult task to de- 
fend it from the charge of being 
farfetched and groundless. Some of 
the forms enumerated by them could 
hardly have stood out with any dis- 
tinctness in the field of vision of 
either the writer or the contemplated 
readers of the Apocalypse. Simcox 
makes a sober statement when he 
writes: "Considering that the dicta- 
torship, the decemvirate, and even 
the tribunate were transitory episodes 
in the Roman government — the first 
avowedly exceptional and ephemeral, 
the second both exceptional and ephem- 
eral, and all three as well as the 
primitive monarchy probably unknown 

the seventieth week will not begin till the period of the Jewish 
restoration at the second advent. The theory appears in The 
Unfolding of the Ages in the Revelation of John by F. C. Ott- 
man, and indications of it are also contained in the Report of 
the Prophetic Conference of 1914. 



106 STUDIES IN 

to Saint John's original readers — this 
view does not appear even plausible. "* 
No one in truth but a grubbing anti- 
quarian could ever have felt the least 
incentive to refer to seven forms of 
Roman government under the name of 
seven kings. What the phrase refers 
to is seven emperors, the count prob- 
ably beginning with Augustus Caesar. 

The gratuitous nature of the third 
special interpretation has already been 
exhibited in the remarks on the sym- 
bolic import of the ten horns of 
Daniel vii. 7, 24 and Revelation xvii. 
3, 12. 2 An implicit criticism has also 
been passed on the next special inter- 
pretation. The absence of any at- 
tempt in Daniel to depict the Roman 
empire, as also of any reliable sign 
that the periods of days which are 
mentioned were meant to be construed 
as periods of years, cancels all positive 
ground for imputing to the book any 



1 The Revelation of St. John the Divine, pp. 104, 105. 
* Pages 96-100. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 107 

reference to papal Rome. To discover 
a subject for the character and deeds 
assigned to the "little horn" there is 
no need to look beyond the typical 
enemy of Israel, Antiochus Epiphanes. 
As regards the Apocalypse the grounds 
for excluding a reference to papal 
Rome are not perhaps quite so de- 
cisive; but they are not insufficient. 
Judicial scholarship finds in the beast 
of Chapter xvii imperial pagan Rome, 
and in the Babylon of the same chap- 
ter the city of Rome. In the second 
beast of Chapter xiii there is very 
likely a reference to a power in the 
spiritual or ecclesiastical order; but the 
power denoted is the pagan priesthood 
viewed especially as fostering the cur- 
rent emperor-worship. The practical 
homage rendered by the second beast 
to the first affords decisive evidence 
that the reference cannot be to papal 
Rome. The popes never were imbued 
with any noticeable ambition to make 
all the world to worship secular rulers. 



108 STUDIES IN 

In so far as papal Rome has acted 
the part of an autocratic, ungodly, and 
persecuting power, some of the sym- 
bolic representations in the Apocalypse 
may be suited to her record, but 
their primitive application belongs to 
a field much nearer to the Revelator's 
experience and observation. They can- 
not with sobriety be utilized for framing 
a chronological succession reaching into 
the modern era. The like remark 
applies obviously to Paul's reference in 
Second Thessalonians to the "man of 
sin." This phrase probably refers to 
an outburst of wickedness having its 
source in spiritual society; but the apos- 
tle may have thought of that order 
of society as being represented by a 
fanatical and desperately wrought-up 
Judaism rather than by an apostate 
form of Christianity. In any case, 
his description affords no basis of 
time measures. 

If the eyesight which discovers papal 
Rome in Daniel and the Apocalypse 



RECENT ADVENTISM 109 

overpasses the range of prophetic in- 
timations, quite as emphatically does 
the vision run to excess which finds 
in these writings references to Moham- 
medanism and the signs of its doom. 
The alleged references — claimed to exist 
in the Apocalypse in one or another 
of the pictorial narratives respecting 
seals, trumpets, or bowls (Chapters vi, 
viii, ix, xi, xvi) — are too vague to 
elicit any faith in one who is not 
already more than willing to believe. 
Adventist discourse on this theme is 
such a play of the imagination as 
might be expended with equal effect 
upon almost any collection of sym- 
bolic representations. 

With all its other grounds of in- 
security Adventist chronological con- 
struction is undermined by the con- 
jectural elements in its starting points. 
A preceding page has given illustration 
of this conspicuous weakness. It is 
really a cause for amazement that 
anyone should repose confidence in 



110 STUDIES IN 

time measures so utterly destitute of 
authenticated starting points as are 
many of those with which Adventist 
chronologers have been occupied. Take 
the period of twelve hundred and sixty 
years which they have concluded to 
be the period allotted to the papacy. 
We are told that the beginning of the 
period may be placed at the date of 
Justinian's decree (A. D. 533), or at 
the time of the decree of Phocas 
(606), or, as one writer informs us, 
at the year when Pope Vitalian pre- 
scribed the use of the Latin language 
in the services of the Church (663). 
Evidently, close reckoning is impossible 
where the starting point is as indeter- 
minate as it is made by these differing 
dates. But the case for Adventist 
chronology is much worse than it 
appears in this statement. To pjace 
the origin of the papacy at any one 
of the given dates is arbitrary well- 
nigh to the point of absurdity. The 
decree of Justinian marked no im- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 111 

portant era in the history of the 
papacy. In its terms it is descriptive 
rather of a patriarchal than a monar- 
chical type of a church government, 
and simply awards an honorary pri- 
macy to the Roman bishop as the 
episcopal head of Old Rome, to whom 
the bishop of Constantinople stands in 
close conjunction as episcopal head of 
New Rome. Practically, too, Justinian 
rendered a very doubtful service to 
the Roman bishop. While, through 
victories over the Goths in Italy, he 
relieved that ecclesiastic of some local 
embarrassments, he prepared for him 
more serious difficulties in the degree 
to which he brought him under im- 
perial domination . ' ' With the conquest 
of Italy/ ' writes Schaff, "the popes 
fell into a perilous and unworthy de- 
pendence on the emperor at Con- 
stantinople, who reverenced, indeed, 
the Roman chair, but not less that 
of Constantinople, and in reality sought 
to use both as tools of his state-church 



112 STUDIES IN 

despotism/ n No more is it in evidence 
that any substantial service was ren- 
dered to the pope by the usurper 
Phocas. He gave, to be sure, a flat- 
tering title which Boniface III was 
greedy enough to accept; but the 
title amounted to little else than a 
form of words. There is the scantiest 
occasion to refer to the decree of 
either of these emperors, to the exclu- 
sion of that of Valentinian III issued 
nearly a century before the time of 
Justinian in behalf of Leo the Great. 
No one of the three fulfilled any 
noteworthy office in founding the pa- 
pacy, or marked any significant era 
in its growth. The order of Pope 
Vitalian respecting the use of the 
Latin language may have had an 
appreciable significance, but no reputa- 
ble church historian would care to 
refer to it as fixing the date of the 
origin of the papacy. 2 

1 History of the Christian Church, revised edition, III. 326. 
Compare Milman, History of Latin Christianity, I. 461. 

2 We do not find eminent church historians — Neander, Schaff, 



RECENT ADVENTISM 113 

Further illustration of the elements 
of insecurity in Adventist chronology 
is scarcely necessary. We wish to 
pass judgment with sobriety. We re- 
spect and even admire the earnest 
piety of some of those who have 
entered into these chronological ven- 
tures. But in all candor we can but 
pronounce the ventures manifest fail- 
ures. Adventist chronological con- 
struction, in view of its imposition of 
a thoroughly doubtful sense upon 
chronological terms in the Bible, its 
rash and gratuitous application of 
apocalyptic symbols and its arbitrary 
assumption of starting points, is unre- 
liable, fanciful, and groundless. 

Moeller, and others — so much as mentioning either the decree 
of Justiniao or the order of Pope Vitalian. The tenor of Justin- 
ian's decree we have judged by the text given by Litch (The 
Probability of the Second Coming of Christ about A. D. 1843, 
p. 88). 

i 



CHAPTER V 

CRITICISM OF SPECIAL TEACHINGS 
OF ADVENTIST PARTIES 

1. Recurring to the list of these 
teachings, as given in a previous chap- 
ter, we begin with the assumption 
characteristic of the great majority of 
Adventist communions respecting the 
unconsciousness or nonexistence of the 
dead in the interval between death 
and the resurrection. Whatever verbal 
support may be claimed for this 
assumption in the Bible, it is dis- 
tinctly in conflict with the conclusion 
which a balanced and comprehensive 
exegesis must derive from the total 
biblical data. Even if it could justly 
be imputed to certain portions of the 
Old Testament, it could not forthwith 
be assigned a place in the biblical 
revelation, since eschatology is a quite 

114 



RECENT ADVENTISM 115 

secondary theme in the Old Testament, 
and it is perfectly conceivable that 
on various points authoritative in- 
struction, as opposed to an incidental 
appropriation of contemporary modes 
of thinking, may have been reserved 
to the New Testament revelation. It 
is in that revelation that immortality 
is distinctly brought to light. As 
compared with the Hebrew oracles it 
speaks with superior authority on the 
future condition of men. 

It is not necessary, however, to 
press this consideration. The Old 
Testament, if less clear and positive 
than the New in this relation, is to 
be credited with the conviction that 
men remain conscious subjects after 
death. A probable evidence in favor 
of its incorporation of this conviction 
may be found in the fact that the 
Semitic kindred of the Israelites in 
Babylon indulged in descriptions of 
the place and state of the dead very 
nearly parallel to those contained in 



116 STUDIES IN 

the Old Testament, and at the same 
time made evident their intention not 
to deny the continued existence of 
the dead, but rather to emphasize 
the woful poverty and emptiness of 
the subterranean life to which they 
have descended. So many are the 
points of correspondence between the 
Sheol of the Israelites and the Aralu 
of the Babylonians that it would take 
very distinct data to overcome the 
presumption that they were both alike 
regarded as abodes of men endowed 
with a species of consciousness, though 
condemned to an inferior shadelike 
existence. 

Another probable evidence is met 
in the characteristic belief of later 
Judaism. This undoubtedly included 
the conscious existence of the dead. 
To whatever point Sadducean nega- 
tions may have run, the great body 
of the Jewish people in New Testa- 
ment times were fully persuaded that 
the dead live on in spite of bodily 



RECENT ADVENTISM 117 

dissolution. 1 The parable of the rich 
man and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31) 
clearly assumes this persuasion in the 
minds of those addressed, for it could 
not be expected that they would be 
influenced by an appeal to conditions 
acknowledged to be purely fictitious. 
It is demonstrated, then, that the 
Jews were not held by the Old Tes- 
tament books to a belief in the uncon- 
sciousness or nonexistence of the dead. 
As a body they came definitely to 
entertain an opposite belief. One can 
indeed accuse them of being faulty 
interpreters; but there is a certain 
presumption on the side of the con- 
clusion that their oracles did not ex- 
clude the ultimate and dominant belief. 
A third probable evidence, so weighty 
as well-nigh to pass over from the 
sphere of probability into that of 
decisive proof, lies in the consensus 
of recent biblical scholarship. This is 

1 See Schurer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter 
Jesu Christi, 1886, Vol. II. pp. 460, 461; Bousset, Die Religion 
des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, pp. 281ff. 



118 STUDIES IN 

unequivocally on the side of the prop- 
osition that Old Testament thought, 
like that of all ancient peoples, ac- 
knowledges the continued existence of 
the dead, though in a state contrasted 
with the virile activity of the present 
life, and capable of being described 
in rhetorical phrase as a sinking into 
forgetfulness and inaction. So decide 
the authors of standard textbooks on 
the biblical theology of the Old Tes- 
tament, like Oehler, Riehm, Dillmann, 
Schultz, and Piepenbring. Indeed, we 
fail to discover a single recent writer 
of acknowledged prominence in the 
field of Old Testament theology who 
takes a different ground. A like state- 
ment is admissible respecting eminent 
expositors of biblical eschatology in 
our time, such as R. H. Charles, S. D. 
F. Salmond, and L. Atzberger. 

In the line of direct evidence two 
conspicuous facts of the Old Testa- 
ment may be cited. In the first place 
the practice of necromancy, or the 



RECENT ADVENTISM 119 

habit of invoking the dead, prevalent 
in Israel from an early to a late period, 
indicates that belief in the survival of 
the dead was deeply imbedded in the 
minds of the Hebrews, and carries 
the implication that when they spoke 
of death as destruction they were 
using a strong figure to describe pre- 
cipitation into the comparatively emp- 
ty existence of Sheol. The second 
significant fact is the description of 
the death of distinguished persons as 
a being gathered to their people or 
their fathers — a description applied "in 
cases like those of Abraham, Jacob 
Aaron, Moses, and others, 1 where the 
temporary or permanent resting place 
was far removed from the ancestral 
graves/' 2 The usage shows that for 
Hebrew thought Sheol was not identi- 
cal with the grave, but was regarded 
as providing for a certain community 
of existence after death. Doubtless it 

iGen. xv. 15, xxv. 8, 17, xlix. 33; Num. xx. 24, 28, xxxi, 2; 
Deut. xxxii. 50, xxxiv. 5. 

2 Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 199. 



120 STUDIES IN 

was felt that Sheol bore a close anal- 
ogy to the grave, being pictured as 
an underground receptacle for the dead. 
This explains how in a number of 
passages it seems not to offend against 
the sense to translate Sheol as the 
"grave." That the two were con- 
founded in the Hebrew mind is far 
from being indicated by their capacity 
to fulfill, within limits, a common 
function in imaginative discourse. 

If the strong phrases in which the 
Old Testament describes the disap- 
pearance of men from the obtrusive 
realities of the present embodied life 
are found not to negate their con- 
tinued existence, still less do any kin- 
dred phrases in the New Testament 
serve to negate such existence. The 
offset here is abundant and decisive. 
Jesus vetoed the postulate of pro- 
fessional Adventism, that the destruc- 
tion of the body is the destruction of 
the individual, by the antithesis which 
he drew between ability to destroy 



RECENT ADVENTISM 121 

the body and ability to destroy the 
soul (Matt. x. 28; Luke xii. 4, 5). 
Again in the parable of the rich man 
and Lazarus he gave a distinct picture 
of a conscious life after death, and 
while some features in the picture may 
have involved accommodation to cur- 
rent belief, it savors of violence to 
construe his underlying assumption of 
continued conscious existence as mere 
accommodation, since the lesson en- 
forced by the parable is vitally de- 
pendent upon that assumption. Once 
more his gracious promise to the dying 
thief is accordant with the natural 
sense of the given parable, as implying 
that death may involve an immediate 
transference from a distressful to a 
blessed estate. The Adventist exegete 
will evade this meaning by joining 
"to-day" with "I say," rather than 
with the clause, "Thou shalt be with 
me in paradise." But this interpreta- 
tion imputes a comparatively pithless 
use of words to Christ, and is credible 



122 STUDIES IN 

only to him who wishes to give it 
his credence. 

In the Pauline writings belief in 
continued conscious existence crops out 
distinctly at various points. The apos- 
tle as good as affirms his belief that 
such existence is not tied to the body. 
In dealing with the Corinthian offender 
he makes a formal contrast between 
the destruction of the body and the 
saving of the spirit. He expresses a 
longing to be clothed upon with his 
house from heaven, lest he should be 
found naked, thereby distinctly ad- 
mitting the possibility of passing into 
the condition of a disembodied spirit. 
He says in relation to an ecstatic 
experience that he could not tell 
whether during its continuance he was 
in the body or out of the body — a 
form of words that can mean nothing 
less than the possibility of an extra- 
bodily existence. In addressing his 
Philippian brethren he sets forth as 
alternatives "abiding in the flesh' ' and 



RECENT ADVENTISM 123 

"departing and being with Christ," and 
declares that he finds it difficult to 
make choice between them. In short, 
the unstudied and incidental state- 
ments of Paul make as forceful a 
testimony to belief in the possible 
existence of the soul apart from the 
body as would the most formal and 
explicit declaration. 

Other portions of the New Testa- 
ment witness to the same belief. It is 
attested by the prayer of the dying 
Stephen to the Lord Jesus to receive 
his spirit; by the Petrine passage on 
the preaching of Christ to the spirits 
in prison, these spirits being identified 
as disembodied men who had trans- 
gressed in the days of Noah (1 Peter 
iii. 18-20, iv. 6); and by the crying 
of the souls of those who had been 
slain for the word of God (Rev. vi. 
9, 10). Passages like the above dis- 
close unmistakably the standpoint of 
the biblical writers, and the exegesis 
which attempts to explain them away 



124 STUDIES IN 

is too obviously overtaxed to gain 
any wide currency in scholarly circles. 
Apologists for the dogma of the un- 
consciousness or nonexistence of the 
dead have the misfortune to be re- 
futed by the Bible in both of its 
main divisions. 

2. The next special theory which 
invites our criticism — namely the doc- 
trine of the little flock — has received, 
as was observed, a peculiar version 
from the hand of C. T. Russell. He 
holds not only that the object of the 
Christian dispensation is to gather 
out from the mass of men a select 
company, but that the members of 
this company alone of all the race 
are lifted above the plane of human 
perfection and made partakers of the 
divine nature. They are as distinctly 
a privileged set as were the "pneu- 
matics" of the old Gnostic speculation. 
In fact, the theory of Russell makes 
as arbitrary divisions of men as were 



RECENT ADVENTISM 125 

ever depicted by Gnostic fancy. It 
represents God as fundamentally con- 
ditioning the possibilities of human 
destiny on the accident of birth within 
a given temporal interval, and as 
limiting to a selected few an inher- 
itance which there is no natural ground 
for denying to any of the saved. It 
is difficult to see how a God who 
adopts such a plan of administration 
can be respected even by the man 
who feels certain that he himself is 
numbered among the favored few. By 
its very terms it shadows divine benev- 
olence and debases divine sovereignty 
to the ranks of arbitrary rulership. 

The doctrine of the little flock, even 
apart from Russell's peculiar supple- 
ment, calls for very scanty apprecia- 
tion. To represent the whole aim of 
the Christian dispensation to be the 
calling out of a predetermined number 
is to set the Author of that dispensation 
in a very unenviable light, as also to 
render very poor justice to the uni- 



126 STUDIES IN 

versality of the grace proclaimed in 
the gospel. Election is doubtless a 
great truth; but election is to special 
responsibilities and ministries, to the 
end that the area of salvation may be 
extended as widely as possible. Men 
are called to be the light of the world 
and the salt of the earth, not to 
felicitate themselves on belonging to 
an exclusive circle of God's favorites. 

3. The curious doctrine of the cleans- 
ing of the sanctuary, which was men- 
tioned as a phase of teaching current 
among the Seventh-Day Adventists, 
had no better basis than a desire to 
preserve credit to a chronological spec- 
ulation, namely, that which found in 
Daniel viii. 14 evidence that a great 
crisis, preparatory to the advent, would 
occur in 1844. Since the precarious 
and improbable elements which enter 
into the given speculation have been 
exposed/ an effective criticism of the 

1 See Chapter iv, topic 5. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 127 

doctrine dependent upon it has already 
been given. We make room, however, 
for a couple of comments. In the first 
place, we remark on the strangeness 
of the fancy that Daniel in his age 
should have been led to measure off 
the time which would elapse before an 
event, belonging entirely in the in- 
visible order and utterly incapable of 
verification by any natural means, 
should occur. Let anyone, who can, 
believe that prophetical inspiration 
functioned in such an eccentric fashion. 
The second comment respects the ultra 
and mechanical ceremonialism involved 
in the theory of a formal cleansing 
of the heavenly sanctuary at a special 
point in the nineteenth century. The 
only intelligible cleansing which can be 
figured for that sanctuary is the putting 
away of obstacles to cordial fellowship 
between the pardoned sinner and the 
God whom he has offended, and that 
occurred when Christ, bearing the 
tokens of his accomplished sacrifice for 



128 STUDIES IN 

sin, ascended into heaven. His presence 
in the nature in which he suffered af- 
forded the needful basis for drawing 
near to God with boldness; in other 
words, the needful cleansing of the 
upper sanctuary. 

4. The last of the special tenets 
claiming our attention is also the 
property of the Seventh-Day Advent- 
ists, being the one which has given 
them their name by its assertion of 
the perpetual obligation of Christians 
to keep sacred the seventh day of 
the week. Were this tenet in any- 
wise representative of primitive or 
apostolic Christianity, we should ex- 
pect to find traces of it in the early 
postapostolic Church. But no such 
traces are found. Doubtless there were 
Christians of Jewish lineage who kept 
the Jewish Sabbath in addition to 
paying special respect to the first day 
of the week — the day honored as com- 
memorative of the resurrection of 



RECENT ADVENTISM 129 

Christ. But in the Gentile world, 
where the constituency of Christianity 
greatly outnumbered its Jewish con- 
tingent before the close of the apos- 
tolic age, recognition of an obligation to 
keep the Jewish day is far from being 
in evidence. On the contrary, such 
obligation was formally disowned, and 
the first day of the week was marked for 
special commemoration, as we learn 
from the writings of the fathers distrib- 
uted through the whole extent of the 
second century. Ignatius of Antioch, in 
that version of his epistles accepted as 
genuine by the foremost scholars, 
plainly indicates his conviction that to 
keep the Jewish Sabbath is to live 
according to Judaism rather than ac- 
cording to Christ, and is contrary to 
the Christian calling. 1 The Epistle of 
Barnabas speaks of the eighth day, 
that is, the first day of the week, as 
significant of the beginning of another 
world, and adds: " Wherefore also we 

1 Epist. ad Magnes., chapters viii, ix. 



130 STUDIES IN 

keep the eighth day with joyfulness, 
the day also on which Jesus rose from 
the dead." 1 In the so-called Teaching 
of the Twelve Apostles Christians are 
enjoined to come together, and break 
bread, and give thanks on the "Lord's 
day" (xiv. 1) — a phrase which, as the 
usage of Ignatius indicates, could have 
designated no other than the first day 
of the week. 2 Justin Martyr testifies: 
"On the day called Sunday all who 
live in the cities or in the country 
gather together to one place." 3 Re- 
specting the observance of the Sabbath, 
he remarks that, as it was not in force 
before Moses, so it is no longer needed 
after the coming of Christ. 4 Irenseus 
classes the Jewish Sabbath with cir- 
cumcision as being rather symbolical of 
truth that applies under the Christian 
dispensation than as remaining in its 



1 Chapter xv. 

2 See Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, ii. 128; Schaff, The 
Teaching of the twelve Apostles, p. 208. 

3 1 Apol., lxvii. 

4 Dial, cum Tryph., xxiii. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 131 

literal character. 1 Tertullian speaks of 
Jewish Sabbaths, new moons, and festi- 
vals as strange to Christians, and puts 
in their place the Lord's Day and Pente- 
cost. 2 The Sabbath precept of Moses he 
distinctly characterizes as temporary. 3 
Such a line of testimonies leaves no 
room for reasonable doubt as to the 
position of the early postapostolic 
Church. It shows that those who 
followed the apostles as leaders and 
teachers knew nothing of any author- 
itative injunction to keep the Jewish 
Sabbath, and, furthermore, were fully 
convinced that the first day of the 
week was to be set apart as preem- 
inently the sacred day for Christians. 
This fact amounts to a strong pre- 
sumptive evidence that no apostolic 
precept in behalf of the observance of 
the seventh day, beyond what is 
recorded in the New Testament, was 
ever issued. Reference can indeed be 

iCont. Haer., iv. 16. 
2 De Idol., chapter xiv. 
8 Adv. Judaeos, chapter iv. 



132 STUDIES IN 

made to a custom still largely prevalent 
in the East in the fifth century to 
hold religious assemblies on Saturday 
as well as on Sunday. So the his- 
torians Socrates and Sozomen report, 1 
and this custom they place in contrast 
with that of Rome and Alexandria. 
It is to be noticed, however, that 
neither of these historians refers to 
any felt obligation to treat Saturday 
as a Sabbatic or rest day, and that the 
first named declared it incompatible 
with the Christian faith and contrary to 
apostolic injunction to practice Jewish 
rites. Furthermore, the custom to 
which they refer as obtaining in the 
East stands in such contrast with the 
explicit testimonies cited from the 
second century that the fair conclusion 
is that it reveals a relatively late, 
rather than a primitive point of view, 
the tradition governing the practice 
of Rome and Alexandria being the 
more ancient. 

i Socrates, Hist. Eccl., v. 22; Sozomen, Hist. EccL, vii. 19. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 133 

As for the New Testament, who 
by searching can find any apostolic 
precept for seventh-day observance? 
Mention, it is true, is made in several 
instances of Paul's election of a Sab- 
bath day as the time for preaching 
in Jewish synagogues. But how else 
could he find a Jewish audience and 
carry out his purpose to first offer 
the gospel message to his own kindred? 
His practice herein contains no hint 
that he commended Sabbath observ- 
ance to the Gentiles or made it the 
law of any church which he ever 
founded. On the contrary, there are 
indications that the first day of the 
week was made the day of assemblies 
for his congregations (Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. 
xvi. 1, 2). Furthermore, in giving 
this instruction to the Colossians, "Let 
no man judge you in respect of a 
feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath 
day" (ii. 16), he explicitly excluded 
the imposition of the Jewish Sabbath 
law upon Christians as a matter of 



134 STUDIES IN 

obligation. That the other apostles 
were agreed with Paul, at least as 
respects the freedom of Gentile Chris- 
tians from that law, may be argued 
from the action of the apostolic council 
at Jerusalem. In its specification of 
things from which Gentile Christians 
might be advised to abstain out of 
respect for Jewish points of view, the 
council made no reference to conduct 
conflicting with the Jewish idea of the 
Sabbath. 

We see, then, that the bearing of 
the New Testament on the question 
before us is conspicuously accordant 
with the standpoint of the postapos- 
tolic Church. In their agreement the 
two sources of evidence powerfully 
confirm the conclusion that the Gen- 
tile world, with full apostolic consent, 
was exempted from the Jewish Sabbath 
law. The attempt of the Seventh-Day 
Adventists to reinstate the Old Tes- 
tament law must be rated as a lapse 
into Judaizing, which in some other 



RECENT ADVENTISM 135 

relations they have been more success- 
ful in avoiding than many of the 
modern advocates of a pronounced 
Adventist creed. 

The historic proof may properly end 
the discussion. Should anyone, how- 
ever, be inclined to improve upon 
apostolic Christianity, and to urge 
that the fourth commandment, as be- 
ing part of a moral code, is perpetually 
binding, we shall be prompt to answer 
by a denial of his premise. The fourth 
commandment may be auxiliary to 
moral ends, but it is not a moral law 
proper, since it is not an unequivocal 
dictate of man's relations to God or 
to his fellows. It is simply a salutary 
disciplinary provision for man at a 
particular stage of his development. 
No one knows that it applies literally 
to the saints in heaven. No one knows 
that the keeping of each recurring 
seventh day is the imperative demand 
for the physical or religious well-being 
of every man. So widely do men differ 



136 STUDIES IN 

in constitution that one man might 
find one tenth of time devoted to 
rest and worship as adequate for his 
needs as one fifth would be for another 
person. The selection of one seventh 
may best meet the average needs of 
men; but averages are a matter of 
expediency and not of morality. The 
content of the fourth commandment — 
which is, of course, a hundred times 
more decisive than mere location — 
plainly excludes it from the category 
of a proper moral law. Sufficient 
credit is given to it when it is ac- 
counted, in its relation to the Chris- 
tian dispensation, simply as a great 
historical precedent providentially de- 
signed to supply the general model of 
the Christian week, and to teach 
impressively the need of a recurring 
day of rest and worship. 

To disparage the observance of the 
first day of the week on the score of 
the character of Constantine, who 
issued the first Sunday law of the 



RECENT ADVENTISM 137 

empire, or on account of a clause 
which he diplomatically inserted for 
the purpose of conciliating the heathen 
majority under his scepter, is just 
about as judicial as to contemn the 
Protestant Reformation by reference 
to the character of Henry VIII or to 
some point in his legislation. On the 
same plane is the berating of Sunday 
observance as involving obeisance to 
Rome and the papacy. What had 
Rome to do with Paul's instruction 
to the Colossians or with the point 
of view represented by such writers 
as Ignatius and Justin Martyr? As 
well put the mark of the beast on the 
doctrines of incarnation and atone- 
ment, because these held a place in 
the faith of the Latin Church, as to 
put it upon Sunday observance because 
forsooth that Church gave its sanction 
to such observance. 



CHAPTER VI 

A LIST OF OBJECTIONS TO RECENT 
ADVENTISM 

The treatment awarded to the car- 
dinal assumptions of Adventism gave 
occasion for a rather full statement 
of several leading objections, such as 
those holding against its narrow inter- 
pretation of the "kingdom," and its 
artificial manipulation of time meas- 
ures. In the present chapter we take 
note of some further objections, which 
apply to teachings that have had 
wide currency, being represented more 
largely outside of professional Advent- 
ism than inside that domain. 

1. Among these objections the lack 
of perspective shown in dealing with 
the subject of the millennium may be 
emphasized with entire justice. The 
biblical basis for affirming so much as 
the idea of the thousand-years reign 

138 



< RECENT ADVENTISM 139 

is exceedingly scanty. Only the book 
most prodigal of poetical symbolism in 
the whole canon of Scripture broaches 
the idea, and this one book contains 
only a single brief passage that carries 
any suggestions of a millennium (Rev. 
xx). The claim, indeed, is not in- 
frequently made that Paul in First 
Corinthians xv. 23, 24 provides for an 
interval between the resurrection of 
those who are Christ's and the resur- 
rection of the rest of mankind, since, 
after referring to the former, he adds: 
"Then cometh the end." But to 
make the word "end" refer here to 
a completing stage of the resurrection 
is quite gratuitous. The fact that 
Paul nowhere else in his epistles refers 
to the resurrection of the wicked lends 
countenance to the supposition that he 
intends no such reference here. More- 
over, it is distinctly more natural to 
make "the end" refer to the closing 
up of the age or dispensation than to 
make it stand for a final stage of 



140 STUDIES IN 

resurrection. 1 It is not to be over- 
looked also that, even if the latter 
sense be given to the expression, there 
is no certification that the traditional 
conception of the millennium was in 
Paul's mind, since he says nothing 
about a special reign, or extraordinary 
era, or, indeed, any measurable period 
at all being interposed between the 
resurrection of those who are Christ's 
and the end. We are thus directed 
to a few verses in the book of Revela- 
tion as the one passage which, with any 
degree of explicitness, gives expression 
to the notion of the millennium. 
Doubtless, as has been contended, an 
authoritative disclosure of some phase 
of the divine plan might be left to a 
single passage in the sacred volume. 
But does it savor of doctrinal propor- 
tion to take the conception contained 
in the single passage, bring it to the 
front, and make its validity vital to 

1 Compare Kennedy, St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things, 
pp. 322-324; Findlay in the Expositor's Greek Testament; Beet, 
Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 141 

faith in the possible success of the 
Christian dispensation? It is one thing 
to admit that a specially distinguished 
era is to antedate the great consumma- 
tion. It is another thing, in face of 
the silence of substantially the whole 
line of biblical writers, to magnify the 
importance of that era and to con- 
centrate hope upon it as including in 
itself the means which alone can bring 
Christianity to a real triumph in the 
world. In proceeding to this extreme^ 
apologists of Adventism exceed the 
warrant of the one millennial passage 
in the Bible. They assume that all 
the righteous dead are subjects of the 
first resurrection. The given passage 
makes no certain reference to any but 
a company of martyrs. They assume 
that the binding of Satan implies the 
signal triumph of gospel agencies. 1 
The given passage does not certify 
that it involves anything more than 



1 Exceptions to this and the following assumption have been 
duly noticed in previous connections. 



142 STUDIES IN 

abstinence from persecuting violence 
on the part of the nations. They 
assume that the reign of Christ is to 
be a visible earthly reign. The given 
passage contains no explicit word about 
the location of the reign or about the 
means by which it is made effective. 1 
In short, typical advocates of Advent- 
ism in recent times rear a superstruc- 
ture much too broad for the biblical 
basis. They fail of perspective in deal- 
ing with the contents of Scripture. 

2. Another objection to recent Ad- 
ventism is the poor respect which it 
pays to the universalism of Christianity 
or its transcendence of national dis- 
tinctions. The New Testament, as 
has already been shown, 2 rises above 
national distinctions, and establishes an 
ideal incongruous with the conserva- 
tion of any temporal or religious pre- 
eminence to Israel. Its teaching 

1 Compare Geisinger, Heart Problems and World Issues. A 
Study in the Book of Revelation, pp. 178-180. 

2 Chapter iv, topic 3. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 143 

implies that as the law was a school- 
master to bring men to Christ, so 
Israel fulfilled its divine calling as a 
forerunner to the all-embracing system 
or dispensation inaugurated in Christ. 
Who can read such a description of 
the centrality of Christ to the spiritual 
universe as is contained in the first 
chapter of the Epistle to the Colos- 
sians, and then think of his reign as 
conditioned upon, or specially allied 
with, a perpetuated Jewish national- 
ism? The New Testament ascends to 
an outlook wherein the metes and 
bounds of Jewish nationality seem 
thoroughly out of place. Rationally, 
too, to put the stamp of a perpetual 
preference upon a single nation is hard 
to justify. Even the temporary posi- 
tion of Israel as an elect nation in- 
volved serious hazards. There was a 
danger that, after having fulfilled the 
office of a forerunner of Christ, it 
should become lacking in humility, and 
refuse to accept that true maxim of 



144 STUDIES IN 

a forerunner so nobly uttered by John 
the Baptist in the words, "He must 
increase, but I must decrease' ' (John 
iii. 30). History shows that the danger 
was far from being evaded, A Christ, 
not thoroughly subordinated to its 
own distinction and preeminence, Israel 
would not deign to own. It came to 
entertain such a stubborn conviction 
that it had a special hen on the divine 
favor that it was no longer pliable to 
the divine will. If this result could 
not be avoided in connection with a 
temporary national distinction, what is 
to be said of the natural effect of a 
scheme which sets Israel above the 
nations in the final disposition of 
earthly forces? What is to guarantee 
that the stamp of aristocratic superi- 
ority will not effect a sense of self- 
importance perilous to the religious 
character of those to whom it has 
been affixed on the ground of national- 
ity? Plainly, something approaching 
to omnipotence would be needed to 



RECENT ADVENTISM 145 

counteract the inherent tendencies of 
the scheme, and to prevent its working 
toward the religious undoing of Israel. 
Rather, we should say omnipotence 
might well be baffled in the attempt 
to overcome the force of the artificial 
conditions. 

The rational objection to a per- 
petual exaltation of a single nation 
reenforces the interpretation which, on 
other grounds, has been given to the 
Old Testament prophecies respecting 
Israel's future. 1 We have an added 
ground for declining to construe those 
prophecies literally; and that means a 
ground for declining to find in them 
forecasts of a millennium proper. 

3. A further objection may properly 
be urged against recent Adventism on 
the score of the virtue which, in its 
doctrine of the millennium, it assigns 
to physical instrumentalities. The 
preaching of the gospel, it is alleged, 

1 Chapter iv, topic 1. 



146 STUDIES IN 

cannot be expected to convert the 
world. Only with the reappearance of 
the Lord, and the inauguration of his 
visible reign, will evangelism succeed 
on any great scale. This point of 
view, we contend, puts a premium on 
physical instrumentalities, and is out 
of harmony with the New Testament 
estimate of spiritual agencies. His- 
tory has not shown that mere phys- 
ical might and display are potent to 
effect spiritual transformations. Christ 
taught his disciples to expect that the 
efficient working of the Holy Spirit in 
and through them would far more 
than compensate for his physical ab- 
sence. In the parable of the rich 
man and Lazarus he expressly asserted 
that those who believe not Moses and 
the prophets would not be convinced 
though one should rise from the dead. 
In the apostolic teaching not a little 
is said about the efficacy of the gospel 
message and about the sanctifying 
power of truth. But vivid as was the 



RECENT ADVENTISM 147 

expectation, in the primitive Christian 
community, of the reappearance of 
Christ, no apostolic word associates 
that reappearance with a prospect of 
world evangelism. We conclude, then, 
that the faith which so many zealous 
millennarians have reposed in the re- 
ligious efficacy of the visible advent 
is very poorly founded. 

4. Once more it can be objected to 
recent Adventism that a tendency to 
abridge missionary incentive lies in its 
characteristic points of view. This is 
not equivalent to saying that up to 
date the champions of a pronounced 
Adventism have exhibited a special 
lack of missionary zeal. An appre- 
ciable number of them have been men 
of admirable religious earnestness, so 
that their books are able to minister 
edification to one who thoroughly dis- 
sents from their ruling conceptions. 
What we maintain is that, in the long 
run, a scheme of doctrine which dis- 



148 STUDIES IN 

parages the efficacy of the ordinary 
means of evangelism, or places the 
main emphasis on a hastening of the 
coming of Christ by a fugitive proc- 
lamation of the gospel to the nations, 
has a tendency to weaken missionary 
incentive. In a community thoroughly 
leavened with a faith in the power of 
gospel agencies to work successfully 
for the redemption of mankind, those 
tendencies may be held in check for 
a considerable period. Nevertheless, 
they are logically inwrought with the 
given system, and in the absence of 
powerful offsetting influences would be 
quite certain to come to manifestation 
sooner or later. 

5. Finally, recent Adventism is in 
some degree exposed to the objection 
that it harbors an over-technical bib- 
licism, to a relative neglect of historical 
and scientific considerations. History 
doubtless has no authoritative message 
to offer on the nearness or the re- 



RECENT ADVENTISM 149 

moteness of the second advent. But 
it does illustrate very strikingly how 
all attempts to fix the time of that 
event have utterly miscarried, and 
thoroughly justifies the induction that 
an attitude of calm waiting rather 
than one of anxious expectation be- 
comes the Christian. If it be said 
that the example of the apostles makes 
for a different conclusion, it is to be 
replied that the apostles took lessons 
from the historical evolution on other 
themes, and in all probability on this 
theme also, and we should be put 
to shame by them if we could not 
derive from the prolonged tuition of 
the centuries wholesome suggestions 
regarding the proper attitude toward 
the prospective advent of the Lord. 
As respects natural science, obviously 
it has no distinct pronunciamento on 
the nearness or the remoteness of the 
end of the dispensation. What it 
does testify is that, so far as natural 
causation is concerned, there is no 



150 STUDIES IN 

substantial reason apparent why the 
earth should not abide and afford 
adequate sustenance to the human race 
for long ages to come. This is not 
saying very much, but to the extent 
that science is able to validate the 
conviction that a law of economy is 
operative in world-management it af- 
fords a ground for surmising that the 
present type of human existence will 
not speedily reach its goal. On the 
ability of science to substantiate the 
given conviction we do not care to 
pronounce. For us the main emphasis 
falls upon the lessons of history. These 
veto, as a piece of egregious folly, the 
attempt to fix the time of the advent. 
Consequently, they advise against mak- 
ing any anxious account of its immi- 
nence. Mental sobriety allows no 
other attitude toward an event that 
lies in an indeterminate future, and 
may be distant by the breadth of 
long ages. From the viewpoint of 
eternity the long ages may indeed 



RECENT ADVENTISM 151 

appear as only a narrow interval; but 
for beings with our time consciousness 
it is psychologically impossible to re- 
duce them to insignificance in our 
customary outlook upon the earthly 
drama. 

Following the suggestions of the 
supplementary sources of evidence, not 
a few in our time are disposed to 
interpret the doctrine of Christ's com- 
ing as properly denoting only the 
progressive triumph of his spirit in 
the world. He comes, they affirm, in 
every notable advance of the type 
of truth and life represented in him 
toward ascendency over the minds of 
men and the institutions of society. 
This interpretation, we cordially ad- 
mit, includes one great aspect of the 
truth of Christ's advent; but we are 
far from being persuaded that it con- 
tains the whole truth. In the New 
Testament revelation the advent stands 
as the great initial event in introducing 
a most extraordinary and ideal con- 



152 RECENT ADVENTISM 

summation, even the completion of the 
judicial process running through his- 
tory, and the instatement of a redeemed 
humanity in an incorruptible inher- 
itance. Its import lies in its relation 
to this marvelous consummation, to 
which it serves in the pictorial repre- 
sentations of the Bible as the preface. 
The coming Christ means the one who 
is to open the door to the transcendent 
and eternal dispensation. Anything 
circumstantial in his coming is of very 
slight consequence, and it is no part 
of religious discretion to award it any 
higher character than that of admissible 
figure. Christian contemplation should 
be directed toward what he comes to 
inaugurate. That is great, glorious, 
overwhelming, something to which the 
best phases of the present temporal 
order make only a distant approach. 
It places a light upon the horizon out 
of whose living glow the faithful toilers 
in the earthly vineyard should derive 
perpetual cheer and inspiration. 



CONCLUSION 

Our task is historical and critical 
rather than constructive. Its execu- 
tion nevertheless has suggested a num- 
ber of inferences on the theme of the 
second advent, and a few words may 
appropriately be added by way of 
summarizing these. 

1. Attempts to determine the time of 
the second coming have no longer any 
credible basis. History has clearly 
demonstrated their utter futility, 
thereby affixing its sanction to the 
old-time declaration, "Of that day and 
hour knoweth no one" (Matt. xxiv. 36). 

2. There is no good warrant for 
associating the second coming with a 
visible earthly reign of Christ. Old 
Testament prophecy can be made to 
support the idea of such a reign only 
by imputing to it a literalism which 
there are sufficient exegetical grounds 

153 



154 STUDIES IN 

for challenging. As for the New Tes- 
tament, it affords not a single text 
which is clearly in favor of a visible 
earthly reign. Some commentators, it 
is true, conceive that in the thought 
of the Revelator (xx. 4-7) this earth 
was to be the theater of the millen- 
nial rule of Christ and of the martyrs 
who were to be granted a part in the 
first resurrection. But other commen- 
tators favor an opposite conclusion. 
The words of the Revelator are quite 
indecisive. They have no efficacy to 
authenticate the notion of an earthly 
reign in face of the fact that the 
general body of relevant texts in the 
New Testament contemplates the sec- 
ond coming as the immediate ante- 
cedent of the final judgment, and not 
one of these texts represents the 
returning Christ as setting foot upon 
the earth. 

3. As there is no suitable warrant 
for the assumption of a visible earthly 
reign, so there is no adequate ground 



RECENT ADVENTISM 155 

for making great account of the vis- 
ibility of the second advent. Were the 
disciples of Christ confined to a single 
limited province, it might be of some 
concern to them to be able to antic- 
ipate that the coming of their Master 
will be in the field of the natural 
vision. But, since they are scattered 
over the globe, there seems to be no 
possibility that he could be disclosed 
to the natural eyesight of more than 
a paltry fraction of them, in any direct 
approach to the earthly theater. This 
is not asserting that it is necessary 
to dispute the visibility of the advent, 
but only that it is not prudent to 
place upon it any appreciable emphasis. 
In the scriptural references the stress 
may be regarded as falling not so 
much on the precise form of the future 
manifestation as on the certainty that 
the Christ who had disappeared would 
reappear in a way that would enforce 
recognition. This is the important 
point, and in view of the unimagined 



156 STUDIES IN 

scope of divine resources it shows 
poor discretion to attempt to inclose 
the subject in a narrow literalism. 

4. A kindred remark applies to the 
idea of the millennium. While not 
rejecting that idea, we may be advised 
not to put too large a meaning into 
the single expression of it contained 
in the Bible. It is to be remembered 
that the Revelator looked out upon a 
world in which a gigantic power held 
sway, a power which gave mortal 
offense to his inherited Jewish belief 
by setting itself up as an object of 
worship, and to his Christian faith and 
zeal by threatening destruction to the 
flock of Christ. He could but regard 
this power — which plainly was none 
other than imperial Rome — as an agent 
of Satan, and he emphatically declared 
as much in his representation that the 
dragon with seven heads and ten 
horns gives to the beast with seven 
heads and ten horns "his power, and 
his throne, and great authority" (xiii. 



RECENT ADVENTISM 157 

2). From his standpoint the rescuing 
of the Christian Church from this 
monstrous foe was of incalculable mo- 
ment. It seemed to him equivalent 
to the binding of Satan and the 
securing to Christianity an era for 
peaceful advance in the world. As 
compared with contemporary condi- 
tions such an era would have a charm- 
ing aspect, and would present a scene 
upon which the martyrs might look 
down with feelings of triumph. It is 
from this point of view that we may 
reasonably construe the millennial pe- 
riod. Noting that it is placed in 
contrast with the period of Satanic 
assault through a persecuting and idol- 
atrous power, we shall find no com- 
pelling occasion to regard it as a period 
in all respects ideal. We shall be at 
liberty to rate it as merely a period 
of free opportunity and marked ad- 
vance for the cause of Christ in the 
world. Ascribing to it this character 
we cannot expect to be able to dis- 



158 STUDIES IN 

criminate its limits with any sort of 
exactness. At least this is the neces- 
sary assumption in so far as we are 
destitute of any proper warrant for 
interpreting the reign of Christ with 
the risen saints as a visible earthly 
reign. For us the millennium denotes 
simply an era of special ascendency 
of Christ's kingdom in the world, an 
era very likely introduced without any 
marked tokens of its arrival. To put 
more into the language of the Revelator 
is to indulge in gratuitous fancy. 

5. In the point of view of the New 
Testament the kingdom of God is 
most closely associated with the person 
of Christ, so that the attitude toward 
the one essentially defines the attitude 
toward the other. Now, in the rounded 
idea of the kingdom there is a union 
of process and consummation. The 
kingdom is both present and future — 
present in its primary stages, future in 
the glorious fulfillment of its ideal. 
Similarly, we may think of the coming 



RECENT ADVENTISM 159 

of Christ as a union of process and 
consummation. He comes in every 
great crisis of the kingdom, such as 
the outpouring of the Spirit at Pente- 
cost, or the definitive overthrow of 
the middle wall of partition between 
Jew and Gentile through the downfall 
of the Jewish State. But beyond all 
these preliminary advents he is to 
come in that transcendent visitation 
which is to signalize the ushering in 
of the perfected kingdom, the ideal 
order of eternity. Thus regarded 
Christ's coming is seen to be both 
premillennial and postmillennial. As 
coinciding with crucial epochs of the 
advancing kingdom it is premillennial. 
Since, however, the millennium, what- 
ever may be its character in other 
respects, is included in the temporal 
order, it is to be followed by the 
glorious consummating advent which 
heralds the arrival of the perfected 
kingdom, the complete installation of 
the realm of the incorruptible life, the 



160 RECENT ADVENTISM 

ultimate or eternal order. Naturally 
it was the coming of the Lord Christ 
in this preeminent sense which specially 
appealed to the hope and aspiration 
of prophetic spirits. It is right still 
to accord it a lofty primacy in Chris- 
tian contemplation, though history may 
properly teach us to assign no little 
value to the advents intervening be- 
tween the ascension and the great 
final disclosure of Him in whom we 
have the assurance of eternal life. 



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